The Four Seasons Of Manuela A Biography The Love Story Of Manuela Saenz And Simon Bolivar

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The four seasons of Marruela

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Books by Victor W. von Hagen

OFF WITH THEIR HEADS
ECUADOR THE UNKNOWN

QUETZAL QUEST

TREASURE OF TORTOISE ISLANDS
JUNGLE IN THE CLOUDS

HERMAN MELVILLE'S ENCANTADAS
THE TSACHELA INDIANS OF WESTERN ECUADOR

MISKITO BOY

THE ETHNOLOGY OF THE JICAQUE INDIANS OF HONDURAS

THE AZTEC AND MAYA PAPERMAKERS

SOUTH AMERICA CALLED THEM

SOUTH AMERICAN ZOO
MAYA EXPLORER: THE LIFE OF JOHN LLOYD STEPHENS

THE GREEN WORLD OF THE NATURALISTS

ECUADOR AND THE GALAPAGOS ISLANDS: A HISTORY

FREDERICK CATHERWOOD, ARCH T

THE FOUR SEASONS OF MANUELA

THE FOUR SEASONS
OF MANUELA

A Biography

THE FOUR SEASONS
OF MANUELA

A Biography

The Love Story of Manuela Saenz and Simon Bolivar

VICTOR W. VON HAGEN

IN COIXABOBA11ON WITH CHRISTINE VON HAGEN

Duell, Sloan and Pearce New Tork
Little, Brown and Company Boston

COPYRIGHT 1952, BY VICTOR. W. VON HAGEN

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS BOOK IN EXCESS OF FIVE

HUNDRED WORDS MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM WITHOUT

PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NO. 52 55:27
FIRST EDITION

DUELL, SLOAN AND PEARCE LITTLE, BROWN

BOOKS ARE PUBLISHED BY
LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY

IN ASSOCIATION WITH
DUELL, SLOAN & PEARCE, INC.

Published simultaneously
in Canada by McClelland and Stewart Limited

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

For
SILVIA

CONTENTS

Spring

The Year 1822
PART ONE: Quito

1 A Woman of Quito 3

2 The Coming of the Demigod 18

3 The Victory Ball 30

4 Triumphs of a Hetaira 40

5 The Price of Gaining 57

Summer

The Years 1823-1827
PART Two: Lima

6 Lima, City of Chaos 77

7 The Step of Conquerors 94

8 The Three-Cornered Affair 124

9 The Laws of Honor 150
10 The Rise and the FaU 160

x Contents

Autumn

The Years 1827-1830

PART THREE: Bogota

11 Bogota, City o Holy Faith 171

12 The Dialectics of Love and Hate 183

13 A Night of September 201

14 Danse Macabre 221

15 And So Manuela 233

16 "Your Immense Loss" 258

Winter

The Years 1830-1856
PART FOUR: Paita

17 The Gray Cliffs of Paita 277

18 "Time WiH Justify Me" 291
Chronology 299
Bibliography and Acknowledgments 301
Index 313

MANUELA SAENZ
1 797-1 856

Spring

The Year 1822
PART ONE

Quito

1

A WOMAN OF QUITO

BY JUNE of 1822 the battle for Quito was over.

The main body of the defeated Spaniards had been captured,
the fugitives flushed out from their hiding places in the frigid up-
lands of the Andes, and all the prisoners mustered for the inarch
to the sea. For days the long lines of hated royalists, contemptu-
ously called godos, still dressed in their blue and gold uniforms,
straggled coastward under guard, an amorphous body of men,
humiliated and defeated, moving their feet over the cold earth,
down through valleys still fresh with the violence of war.

The land was beautiful. An immense sun flooded the bare moun-
tains and gave the gray-brown, treeless hills a chromatic luster.
Yet its rays could not heat the pallid atmosphere, or warm the
miserable soldiers, and nightfall brought winds and cold. As the
prisoners struggled downward, the unburied dead lay where they
fell, their emaciated bodies an offering to the condors which fol-
lowed the snaking columns of men.

Guards flying the red, gold and blue gonfalons of the Republic
of Gran Colombia rode beside the prisoners, urging them on with
the points of their partisans. They were uniformed in ill-fitting
homespuns, green piped with red, and they rode their horses bare-
footed, bracing their feet in shoe-shaped brass stirrups; their bare
heels were festooned with huge-roweled spurs, like the gaffs of a
fighting cock. The faces of the troops were Indians* faces, round
and copper-colored, with straggling beards and slanting Mongolic
eyes, for such was the racial heritage of the fighters who had

4 The Four Seasons of Manuela

defeated the battle-proud legions of imperial Spain on the dizzy
slopes of the Andes above Quito.

As the shuffling columns passed along the road, Indians muffled
in woolen ponchos ran from their houses to look in silence at the
long lines of the godos, the "Goths." For these were the enemy who
for the last fifteen years had turned their ancient land into a battle-
field, who had impressed them like pack animals into the army,
and had used them as one more weapon against the rising forces
of independence. But the battle-weary prisoners were oblivious
to the stares of the Indians. They were beyond the reach of hatred.

In a narrow mountain pass, where centuries of trudging feet
had worn a deep wedge into the earth, the column of prisoners
suddenly bumped to a halt From its head came the short rasp of
command, and they were ordered to flatten themselves against
the walls of the pass. A caravan, going toward Quito, was working
itself up in the opposite direction. It was a squadron accompany-
ing some person of importance, for its officer taking the salute of
the barefooted lancers was well groomed and handsome in his
green uniform and high black patent-leather Wellington boots.
And the mounted troops of the squadron were soldierly in ap-
pearance, booted and spurred. Behind the troopers came the cargo
mules weighed down with ill-balanced trunks women's traveling
trunks, tied with raw leather thongs, and behind the trunks two
female slaves. They were both mounted. The first, a fine-featured
light-skinned Negro, very ill at ease, rode sidesaddle. Her head
was turbaned, golden earrings fell from her pierced ears, yet she
wore a soldier's green uniform, covered by a thick Indian poncho.
She made no answer to the shouts of the soldiers as she rode by,
brushing against them with her out-turned legs. Not so the other
who followed astride; she flung back their ribaldries, even turning
in the saddle to continue the banter.

This Jonotds, Spanished from "Jonathan/* was immensely ugly.
Her black face was pitted with pox scars and her frizzled hair was
trimmed down until it looked like an ink-black doormat flung
across the top of her head. But her face had an extremely mobile

A Woman of Quito 5

expression, and there was a libidinous look in her eyes; she wore
her soldier's uniform deeply open at the neck, so deep in fact that
one could see the dark shadows of her breasts.

There was a sudden movement up the line, a craning of necks
and a pressing outward, as man after man the soldiers flattened
themselves against the sides of the declivity. Prancing up the
narrow half-path toward them came a spirited black horse, its
strong neck arched against the tug of reins and bit, its ironshod
hoofs dancing a delicate way among the ruts and boulders of the
trail. The one who controlled this high-strung mount, by skillful
pressure of hand and knee, was clearly a masterly equestrian;
prisoners and guards alike were amazed to see that the rider was
a white woman.

This was doubtless the person of importance the squadron was
escorting. Her face, her bearing and her appointments alike
showed it; everything about her suggested pride and elegance.
She rode her horse en amazone. Her small feet, shod in patent-
leather boots, rested lightly in the stirrups, and the golden
rowels at her heels tinkled at her mount's movements like little
bells. Her bottle-green riding habit, pseudomilitary in cut and
decked on the shoulders with gold-tasseled epaulets, revealed an
arresting combination of slenderness and sinuous grace. The pink
stock at her throat emphasized her oval face, her clear alabaster
skin; and the dark hair, braided in heavy coils, showed from be-
neath her gold-trimmed officer's kepi. There was a faint sus-
picion of down which accentuated the curve of her full lips, laugh-
ing lips which gave her face a wildwood voluptuousness. And her
nose, delicate and slightly aquiline, showed the arrogant heritage
of aristocratic Spain. But her eyes were dark, challenging and
mischievous, and she swept the green-clad republican soldiers
with a searching boldness as if she half expected to find an old
acquaintance among them. There was something quite untram-
meled about her, almost wayward; yet the hands with well-
groomed and pretty nails that lightly held the reins bore the
tapered fingers of the born lady. They were hands also capable

6 The POUT Seasons of Manuela

of action. Two enormous brass Turkish pistols, cocked and ready
for use, lay there bolstered by her knees. The name engraved on
their brass mountings was easy to read: Manuela Saenz.

It had been seven years since she had left this Ecuador, this
land of her birth; seven eventful years since she was expelled from
the Convent of Santa Catalina in Quito and escorted forcibly,
under the glances of uncompromising monks, over this same road
to the tropic seaport of Guayaquil. There she had been shipped
off, in a rebellious mood, to her father in Panama. And now this
land, once the Kingdom of Quito, was one of the free states of the
Republic of Gran Colombia. Still the form of the government had
not changed the essence of the country. The sky still had the color
of lapis lazuli, a blue which no artist could capture in the limita-
tions of his palette, and the long line of snow-capped volcanoes,
many of them three miles high, were still as she remembered them,
giants thrusting their dazzling white glaciers into the Ecuadorian
sky. Indian huts, drab and windowless mud houses, spotted the
land; the timeless Indians still worked in their fields, cultivating
the purple-flowered potato which gave a note of color to the gray
of these high plateaus.

Yet for all their appearance of bucolic peace it was dangerous
to ride over these mountains in the best of times. Now, with the
echoes of war over the land, and a desperate scattered enemy still
hiding out from the triumphant patriots, it was, it seemed, an act
of f oUy for a well-bred lady to make the trip from the coast to the
mountain-bound city of Quito. So must have thought the patriot
soldiers, covertly eying this attractive girl who rode her black
horse like a hussar. But when she stopped to question one of the
officers about the details of the battle, one of their unspoken ques-
tions was answered. She was a woman of Quito. No one could
ever mistake that lisp in her Spanish that marks the speech of the
equator. And her questions were incisive; the manner of their
asking showed that she knew much about the techniques and
terminologies of war.

The battle, she learned, had been fought on May 24. And it

A Woman of Quito 7

had been, in these wars that had raged back and forth across South
America for thirteen years, a battle of decision. The entire Spanish
army, with its officers and equipment, had fallen to the patriot
forces. Now the whole of Ecuador would be incorporated into
the newly formed Republic of Gran Colombia.

It was, in fact, the next to the last step in a giant pincers move-
ment, continental in scale, which was designed to compress the
armies of imperial Spain into a single concentrated region, where a
final victory would assure the liberation of the continent. For years
the ill-armed, ill-trained Americans had fought a terrible war, a
war without rules, against the veterans of Spain. Finally General
Simon Bolivar had cleared Venezuela of the foe, moved into
Colombia, defeated the godos there, and driven their remnants
along the backbone of the Andes, southward into Ecuador.

Meanwhile, four thousand miles to the south, and co-ordinated
only by some unseen spirit of triumph, General Jose de San Martin
had assembled an army in Argentina, had crossed the Andes
an expedition that dwarfed Napoleon's crossing of the Alps
and had fallen on the unsuspecting royalists in Chile. The pincers
were at work; Lima fell; the enemy was being compressed into
Peru. To clear Ecuador and further reduce the Spanish power of
movement, a polyglot patriot army was hastily flung together and
marched against fighting opposition up the slopes of the Andes
toward Quito. There the bulk of the royal armies waited in arro-
gant confidence. General Sucre, the young field commander of
the allied patriot forces, had thought out the strategy. First, he
deployed his forces as if for a frontal attack on Quito; then he
shifted the bulk of his troops under cover of an icy night and
climbed the Pichincha volcano that hung its bulk a mile over the
city. The Spanish commander wakened on the morning of May 24
to see the patriot army looking down his throat. He ordered his
troops to climb that sixteen-thousand-foot mountain and give
battle in and about its serrated rim. Below, people crowded the
roofs, climbing the belfries of the churches to get a glimpse of the
melee that raged above the clouds. But they could see little, and

8 The Four Seasons of Manuela

knew nothing of their fate until the blue and gold figures of the
royalists were seen running down the sides of the mountain.
Then they knew that the patriot army had won.

All this to the woman of Quito was a triumph. For in the days
and months of her twenty-four years she could hardly remember
a moment in which there had not been war wars caused by
the fierce desire of her people to be free. She had virtually sucked
in these feelings with her mother's milk; she had lived the revolu-
tion, witnessed the long course of its barbarity and its idealism,
and had taken an active part in it. One of the officers gave her all
the details of the battle, naming those of her friends who had been
in the final action there was Larrea, Montuf ar, Chiriboga, Asca-
subi, D'Elhuyar . . .

Fausto D'Elhuyar . . . now that was a name of all names to
evoke a whole train of bittersweet memories.

As Manuela's squadron emerged from the pass and gained the
King's Highway, lined with spined agave plants, she remembered.
She could recall Fausto very well, very well indeed. How ele-
gant he had seemed in his royal uniform, white piped with gold,
and his skintight pants braided with arabesques that moulded his
legs like those of a dancer. It had all happened suddenly. And
like a summer storm it was over. Fausto had a reputation; he was
adept at singeing women. Duennas at formal dances had reason
to be agitated when he moved among their little pigeons, eying
first this morsel and then that. He was an officer in the King's
Guards, one of the privileged. His father was a famous scientist,
who had discovered tungsten and published a series of obscure
books which were important to the Crown. And, even though
his brother was then fighting with the insurgent General Bolivar
on the llanos of Venezuela, Fausto kept his position.

Manuela Saenz was then seventeen. Since her mother's death,
the Convent of Santa Catalina had been her home. It was, in old
Quito, a famous institution. Its convent walls then meant nothing,
or next to nothing. Discipline was loose. Some married women
sought sanctuary there to escape the assiduities of their mates,

A Woman of Quito 9

while others were imprisoned, so to speak, by command of the
Bishop on application by their husbands, for being too often in
other people's beds. Nuns left the walls to spend festive days at
home. And it was whispered that the freshly minted children who
had free run of the convent had been stamped out by the padres.

Manuela had been placed in Santa Catalina for her education,
for it was a school of sorts too; and there she had her learning,
such as it was, in more ways than one. The insecurity of her life
had made her rebellious, and she was already a formidable person.
"I hate my enemies,'" she would say, "and I love my friends." No
compromise here, no dissimulation, no moderation. It was certain
that men looked hungrily at her, and that she tilted with many.
Yet she routed them all all, that is, until Fausto appeared. So
one night Manuela slipped out of the convent to join him. They
wandered into the Quito hills together, and under the spell of
that Faustian magic Manuela was easily seduced.

When she returned, the abbess of the convent would have none
of her. Since she had outraged the decencies of society, she was
expelled from Santa Catalina, for she had complicated a situa-
tion already difficult. All over Quito, when the scandal came out,
people could be heard saying, "That is just what one would ex-
pect from a bastard/*

The marks of battle, fresh and raw, increased as the squadron
neared Quito. Houses were gutted, and fields deserted. More and
more frequently they came across condors feeding on the bodies
of dead horses great carrion birds that unfurled the white muffs
at their throats and beat at the air with giant wings as Manuela's
escort rode by. The bones of the unburied dead lay about too,
and broken weapons which the people had no time yet to gather.
The land was scarred by war, and yet it was a land Manuela re-
membered.

She paid little attention to the stiff depersonalized figures hang-
ing from the branches of mole trees, for death had been a part of
her childhood, and she had seen much the same things a decade

10 The Four Seasons of Manuela

ago when the forces of revolution had sent her father in flight
from Quito. During these uneasy years she was tortured by her
illegitimacy. When she first learned of it, and had been called
"bastard" by other children, she was frightened and incredulous.
From the days of her first understanding she had known something
was wrong; the whispering of her Indian nurse had hinted at it.
Later she discovered what it was. Joaquina Aispuru, with whom
she lived, was in fact her mother; but her father was married to
someone else, and her mother was not married at all Not to "be-
long" was in itself bad enough, but worse still were the ideologi-
cal conflicts of her parents. Her mother was native-born, her father
a Spanish godo, a finished gentleman whose fidelity to the King
of Spain nothing could impugn. There was never a point of rest
in her young life. Everything was in conflict. For years even
the date and place of her birth were a mystery, and when
asked she would answer in studied ambiguity: "My country is all
of the Americas; I was bom under the equatorial line."

Perhaps the moment of her conception had something to do
with it, and perhaps her character was implicit in her genesis.
It was a point to think about. For does one partake of one's mo-
mentary environment during conception and acquire, as if by
osmosis, something out of the pulse of the time and place?
Manuela was conceived during that horrible earthquake year of
1797, when a cataclysmic tremor brought down half of Quito.

The earth had opened and spewed out its inner wrath. All along
the backbone of the Andes, where an avenue of volcanoes acted
as safety valves, the land shook and trembled. For a thousand
miles cities felt the shock; but charming little church-filled Quito,
lying two miles high on the equator, felt it the worst The Renais-
sance tower of the Church of the Fathers of Mercy swayed, then
fell into the street, burying hundreds of terrified people in its
rubble. Houses collapsed; churches disintegrated, killing thou-
sands who had taken refuge under their great gold-encrusted
naves. When the last shock was over, the priests organized a
procession, and Indians carrying the Virgin of Earthquakes

A Woman of Quito 11

crawled painfully over the rubble-strewn streets, chanting a litany
especially written for moments of this kind. For weeks the coun-
tryside was filled with people wandering from ruin to ruin,
stunned by the shock. It was a day to remember., that day of
destruction in 1797.

Time healed Quito's wounds. The dead were buried, the build-
ings restored, the gaping fissures filled with rubble by legions of
Indian workmen. The Viceroy of Peru sent his engineers, and the
King of Spain even though harassed by wars on his frontiers
sent a large gift of money to that "noble and loyal city of Quito."
But the wounds of the soul, the cicatrized conscience of the people
of Quito, the priests never allowed to heal. It was the endless
subject of endless sermons. The earthquake of 1797 had been
sent by God to punish them, for Quito had the reputation of being
the most licentious city in the whole Viceroyalty. The gaming,
the whoring that went on in the houses of the people of quality
were known far and wide. A report on these conditions, the Secret
Notices of America, was so devastatingly accurate that the King's
ministers felt it necessary to suppress it.

This moralizing over the earthquake of 1797 fell hard on many
a Quito lady, but hardest of all on Joaquina Aispuru. She was now
in a condition which made it impossible for her to attend church,
for even her hooped skirts failed to hide her pregnancy. To any
casual passer-by, let alone the members of the household, it
was obvious that Joaquina was with child. And it was to be a
bastard.

Joaquina Aispuru was the youngest daughter of Mateo Jose de
Aispuru, a Basque of noble birth who came to America to revive
his fortunes. He had married Gregoria Sierra, sired four children,
and acquired a large estate in the environs of Quito. By 1797 he
was fortunately dead, or the disgrace of his youngest daughter
would have killed him. Joaquina lived through the nightmare of
her pregnancy, and in due time gave birth to a daughter. On the
night of St. Thomas Day, in the semi-darkness of the quarter-
moon, a little girl child, wrapped in a fine, delicately fringed

12 The Four Seasons of Manuela

shawl, was brought to the rector of a church in one of the outlying
parishes of Quito, and there baptized . . . "the 29th of December
1797 solemnly baptized Manuela . . . bom two days previously,
a spurious child whose parents are not named. . . .**

Parents not named . . . Yet certainly half of Quito's thirty
thousand inhabitants could have filled in the blanks of this Man-
uela's baptismal certificate. Her father was a Spanish nobleman,
Don Simon Saenz y Vergera, Member of the Town Council, Cap-
tain of the King's Militia, and Collector of the Decimal Tithes
of the Kingdom of Quito. One would not ordinarily have suspected
Don Simon. He was a well-known figure in Quito with no reputa-
tion for wenching. He went about impeccably dressed in a plum-
colored surtout and satin knee breeches; his three-cornered hat
rested at the correct angle on neatly powdered hair. He was a man
of probity, punctilious in dealing with the King's affairs, a sharp
uncompromising businessman. He was married to a noble and
wealthy woman, and was the father of four children - one of
whom, a son, had been born just a few days before this little by-
blow.

Simon Saenz had been born in Spain in the middle of the eight-
eenth century in Burgos (said his credentials) in the Villa de
Villasur de Herrera, and of a family of distinction. Arriving in
Panama during the North American Revolution, he made his way
to the Kingdom of Quito, and met and married the moneyed
widow Juana Maria del Campo. He began importing Spanish
goods for resale, his business flourished, and the emoluments of his
royal offices increased his fortune. He sired his family, and chan-
neled his driving energy into making money and amassing titles
of distinction. But card playing, such as the recently introduced
French game of trente-et~un, and the seducing of young girls did
not seem to lie in the category of his interests. So how in God's
name, the gossips echoed, had he gotten to eighteen-year-old
Joaquina Aispuru?

The birth of Manuela set off its own little war of clacking
tongues. Quito often heard more of the battle between the fam-

A Woman of Quito 13

flies of this charming little bastard than it did of the revolution

fermenting within the houses of the city.

Everything, as she rode along the King's Highway, seemed to
remind Manuela of her living past; the land, the fields, the houses,
each one evoked some poignant memory. Yet much had changed
in her in the seven years since she had left Ecuador. As her horse
fell into an easy canter behind the squadron of lancers, thoughts
of the troubled past arose to disturb the well-established present.
At the age of seventeen in 1815 she had been an unwanted child-
woman expelled from a convent, her father an exile, her mother's
family hostile, her prospects dim. Now, seven years later, she was
the wife of a wealthy English resident of Lima, mistress of a house
within the walls of the city and another in the fashionable envi-
rons; she had been decorated with the coveted Order of the Sun;
she was a charming, self-possessed woman of twenty-four, every-
where respected and everywhere envied.

The highway as they neared Quito was crowded with soldiers.
The Andean savannahs gave way to mountains again, and on all
sides the land rose in untiring sweeps to that rock-hard world
which surrounded Quito. In the distance were the volcanoes that
encircled die city. Beyond it (for in June in the Andes the visibil-
ity is infinite ) snow-tipped mountains gave the landscape a feel-
ing of immensity and serenity. Soldiers were in the fields training
in close-order drill; soldiers sat in the doorways of the little grass-
thatched roadside houses cleaning their muskets; soldiers hung
about canteens from which the odor of chicha, the native fer-
mented corn-beer, drifted across the landscape; hussars rode by
with a rattle of sabers; soldiers were everywhere. As the squadron
approached the built-up edge of the city, beyond the stone bridges
that spanned small rivers, there was an intense activity outside
of the houses. By order of tihe Commandant and they had seen
these broadsides pasted up along the highway all houses were
to be freshly painted for the celebration of the Day of Liberation.
The one-storied houses of adobe were having their sides tinted in

14 The Four Seasons of Manuela

riotous colors, pinks, blues, greens, carmines, by chattering legions
of poncho-clad Indians. All along the road there was an under-
current of excitement. Yet when the squadron approached and the
people saw the well-dressed officers, the strangely-attired Negro
slaves, the number of mules engulfed by trunks and boxes, and
finally the elegant young woman, riding astride, the buzzing activ-
ity stopped; the workmen gathered in groups to gape and specu-
late on the identity of the party.

At a rise in the road, the white city could be seen lying in the
valley of Anaquito. Mountains towered over the city, and its out-
skirts extended into the foothills; streets could be seen wandering
up the sharp, steep Andes. It was a delightful colonial city "the
finest in all South America/' the great traveler Alexander voij.
Humboldt had said of it before the earthquake of 1797. It was
formed around three principal plazas, from which ran the streets,
straight and narrow, dividing the city into ordered sections like
the squares on a chessboard. In the exact center of Quito was its
principal plaza, laid with flagstones and ornamented with a huge
stone fountain, where animals slaked their thirst and from which
Indians drew water in huge sienna-colored vases for their mas-
ters' households. The Cathedral, squat and low the least im-
pressive of Quito's magnificent churches stood at one side of
the plaza, and directly across from it was the Archbishop's Palace,
as cold and as remote as God. On another side was the Cabildo,
built in 1534, which housed the city offices an immense building
under whose portico numerous public scriveners sat at little tables
and, wrapped in ponchos to keep out the insistent cold, wrote
their clients' letters. On the plaza's fourth side stood the palace
of the government, the administrative center of the area which
included the ancient cities of the Presidency of Quito, Above the
city's one-storied dwellings, their doorways sculptured in many
a proud coat of arms, towered the churches of Quito, wonderfully
contrived churches with elaborately carved fagades.

The people of Quito were the strangest conglomeration of
castes and social patterns that ever formed a community. Before

A Woman of Quito 15

the revolution Its population exceeded thirty thousand souls. Of
these, six thousand were pure-blooded Spaniards, many of them
title-proud counts and marquises of so ancient a lineage that they
would begin their prayers "Mother of God, our cousin , , /* Those
of mixed blood, the cholos, numbered more than one third of the
people; they were the barbers, the storekeepers, the factors, the
artisans, the major-domos, the scriveners. And, since they were
a pincushion of resentment, the cholos were the active revolu-
tionists. The Indians, the bulk of the population, who dressed in
white knee-length cotton drawers and woolen ponchos, were the
laborers, the dray animals, the farmers. There was finally, like a
factor completing the sum, a scattering of Negroes all slaves.

This was Quito.

At the gates of the city, the squadron passed a crude gibbet
from which dangled a corpse. Its head, tilted to the right, seemed
to contemplate the sign stuck to its coat, on which was printed
the single word godo. Further along they passed iron cages, hang-
ing from the high rafters over the highway; from behind their bars
mummified human heads still smiled horribly on the passers-by*
To Manuela Saenz they were relics of the terrifying past; for they
were the heads of the patriots who had led the abortive revolt of
1809. In the melee her father had fled, losing his fortune in his
headlong escape; and her half sister, a bellicose goda, had slipped
into an officer's uniform and led a company of royalists back into
the city. The Crown had won out that time, and the streets had
gagged on the blood of massacred patriots. Manuela had been only
twelve, but she remembered vividly the gibbet standing in the
plaza, and conspirators of the lesser sort hanged in monotonous
succession. Those of higher rank were torn to pieces, their legs and
arms being tied to horses which were driven off toward the four
points of the compass. For the members of the revolutionary Coun-
cil was reserved a more suitable demise: cut down from the hang-
man^ noose while still alive, they were decapitated and their
heads put into iron cages for display about the city. Then their
hearts were ripped from their bodies and tossed into a boiling

16 The Four Seasons of Manuela

cauldron in the center of the plaza. By the Viceroy's orders these
ceremonies had been witnessed by all the families of the con-
demned. Manuela especially remembered Carlos Montufar, son of
the Marquis de Selva Alegre, and last of the Council to meet
his death. He was made to witness the execution of all the others;
his ears were filled with their shrieks and moans; his eyes saw every
detail of the torture and bloodletting before his turn came. He
had stood there pale as marble, unflinching and unmoved, even
when Manuela had eluded the guards and placed in his manacled
hands a single half -withered flower.

It seemed hardly possible, after all these years of hatred, of
war, of torture, that Quito was at last free. And now she had
heard it from a group of soldiers down the road General Bolivar
was expected any day to enter Quito in triumph, to proclaim its
liberties, and to incorporate the country formally into the Repub-
lic of Gran Colombia. She had only to look about her to see the
decorations being raised, the houses being repainted, the tailors
sitting at work in the sun-splashed doorways sewing on new uni-
forms for the officers, to sense the enthusiasm that had taken hold
of the city at the prospect of the coming of their hero. Something
of the same excitement tingled within herself; for there was no
other name in the land that aroused so strong an emotion as that
of Bolivar. Victor in a score of hard-fought battles, liberator of
Venezuela and Colombia as well as of Ecuador, he was to her, as
to thousands of others, the very symbol of the struggle for inde-
pendence.

Just inside the city's gate, a road block had been set up a huge
pole barring the highway, marked in the red, blue and gold colors
of the Republic of Gran Colombia. Soldiers with fixed bayonets
stood at one side, and an officer leaning on a cavalryman's saber
waited the approach of the little squadron. Extreme caution was
being used to examine the papers of all who sought to enter, for
it was only two weeks since the battle for Quito, and desperate
Spanish soldiers were still hiding in the city and the hills. At the

A Woman of Quito 17

officer's command, Manuela handed him the passport which had

thus far cleared her journey. He read in part:

Lieutenant Colonel Francisco Freicano, Captain of the Port of
Lima, certifies the sailing of the English Brig Deadema, on the
25th of May, 1822, destination Ecuador. Captain Harper Roche,
Master; supercargo James Thome and his wife, Manuela Saenz,
with her two slaves.

Manuela Saenz! There were few here who did not know that
name. She was remembered all over Quito. The document was
passed from hand to hand; officers and soldiers alike looked up at
her with astonishment. She had scandalized the city by her very
birth, no less than by the escapades of her adolescence; and the
quarrels of her divided family had been common talk for fifteen
years. Other officials came to examine the document, to stare at
the familiar name and at the poised young lady, who from the
height of her black horse looked down at them with mischief and
cool appraisal in her dark eyes. The barrier was raised, and Ma-
nuela continued her journey into the heart of town; but the news
of her arrival traveled ahead of her. Those who knew the intimate
details of her lively past repeated them to all who would listen;
those who did not, found the sober truth no impediment to the
flight of lurid imagination. Even the expected arrival of Simon
Bolivar was at the moment less exciting than this new sensation.
For Bolivar, though no doubt a great man, was after all an out-
lander; but "La Saenz" was one of their own, and a delightful spice
of scandal hung about her name. From door to door, from street
to street, the word spread; within the hour all Quito had heard
the startling news.

Manuela Saenz had come home.

THE COMING
OF THE DEMIGOD

A SINGLE ROCKET trailing a comet-tail of flame shot into the sky,,
and thousands of eyes watched it burst into blue and red stars
high in the Quito sky. Then the sky became alive with bursting
rockets. High on the Panecillo, the sugar-loaf hill that dominated
the center of the city, cannon went into action and the thunder
of the salute rolled down upon the massed people. Then the bells
all the church bells of the city began clanging at once. The
Indian bell-ringers were swinging on the ropes in high glee, oblivi-
ous to the chaos of sound above their heads. The crowds, strug-
gling for a place of vantage, were slowly pushed back by the sol-
diers from the narrow cobbled street, to clear it for the entrance
of Bolivar.

All of Quito had turned out for the great event. Here a marquis
in old-fashioned court dress, with blue velvet waistcoat massively
embroidered in silver, and a three-cornered hat, rubbed shoulders
with Indians in woolen ponchos and braided pigtails. A young
lady in white muslin, her hair caught up in a Grecian knot, defied
the sharp tang in the air to reveal the charms of the Regency style
and tripped over the flagstones in her ballet slippers, trying to
avoid the soldiers. Barbers, nuns, tradesmen, children were every-
where in the mounting confusion, pushing their way to their ap-
pointed places. All along the King's Highway thick-lettered broad-
sides on the walls proclaimed the day: June 16, 1822. But there

The Coming of the Demigod 19

was scarcely a need for it; everyone knew that today Simon Boli-
var would make his entrance into the city.

He was coming; and after days of preparation, Quito was ready
for him. The republican troops, victors of the Battle of Quito, had
been furnished with new green uniforms; they had drilled,
marched and wheeled until every soldier knew each military
movement with almost Prussian precision. Arches of triumph at
intervals spanned the highway, and the house fronts were gay
with native laurel and palm fronds from the tropical coast. Along
the route were clusters of little Indian girls dressed as multicolored
angels, waiting impatiently with furled gauze wings; they were to
shower the hero with rose petals. A band of brass instruments,
which no one but huge-lunged Indians could blow in Quito's rare-
fied atmosphere, marched down the street; after it came other
Indians whose arms were locked about a veritable arsenal of fire-
works. The enthusiasm was contagious. From every church flew
the republican flag, and the balconied houses that faced the line
of march were emblazoned with bunting of red, blue and gold.
Stalls had sprung up about the Plaza de San Francisco, and there
hucksters in blue homespuns sold corncakes, sausages, saveloys
and cakes, four-pound loaves of bread, wines and fermented corn
chicha. Other sidewalk merchants offered patriotic songs which
had been printed on Quito's one printing press; there were tri-
color cockades to put in hats and ribands designed to hang from
the pigtails of Indians; there were all sorts of cheap gewgaws for
the festive occasion.

A hadess rider came careening down the street scattering the
people who had pushed out onto the cobblestones, shouting at
the top of his voice that the Liberator was at the edge of the city.
There was a final rush to places of advantage, a good-natured
scurrying and pushing like a crowd scene in an opera bouffe. The
little Indian angels opened their bright wings to the Andean
breeze and were jostled into their places, while the nuns who
shepherded them shook their wimpled heads as if to say, TEt is a
miracle, a miracle/*

20 The Four Seasons of Manuela

And it was. By the year 1819 Spain had crushed all organized
patriot resistance in the north, and the insurgents had been re-
duced to small guerrilla bands, poorly armed and half starved.
Suddenly General Simon Bolivar broke out of the plains of Vene-
zuela where he had been contained, outflanked the godos and
marched over the Andes. On the morning of August 9, 1819, he met
and destroyed the armies of the Spaniards sent out to capture him
at Boyaca. The last Viceroy of New Granada, Juan Saraano, dis-
guised in green cloth cape and a hat of red rubber, abandoned his
palace in Bogota and set off down the river to exile. Within the
next two years Bolivar had reconquered Venezuela, cleared Co-
lombia of the enemy, and begun skirmishes on the periphery of
Quito that led to its eventual liberation. Now the genius of this
victory Bolivar was upon them.

The elite of Quito crowded the balconies. For this was not alone
a people's victory, but a movement for independence initiated by
many of the titled grandees of the city. The Marquis de Selva
Alegre, who had given his fortune and the life of his son to the
cause, appeared with the prerogatives of his rank in embroidered
coat, knee breeches, full-bottomed periwig and ancient tricornered
hat of a style which had disappeared a decade ago; he looked
down upon the milling crowd with quizzing glances. Most of the
other noblemen, despite their republican sentiments, were simi-
larly dressed in the style of the old regime. But the young men had
long discarded these reminders of the past and appeared as Re-
gency gentlemen, with dress coat fitting closely to the body, and
collar as stiff as the hames of a horse and high enough to reach
the ears. The old dowagers still clung to the styles of the 1790's,
with the contouche overdress, and all were openly aghast at the
new modes from Paris. The young women appearing on the bal-
conies wore light dresses with graceful flowing skirts, the waist-
line high under the breasts, the neckline square and low, edged
with black ribbon or handmade lace.

To the common folk in the street, these aristocratic gatherings
were a major part of the show; and none more so than the group

The Coming of the Demigod 21

on the balcony of Juan de Larrea's mansion. This was the finest
house in Quito, two stories high, with grilled windows and elabo-
rately carved wooden railings. A dozen ladies and gentlemen of
prominence occupied the balcony; but the one who caught all
eyes was the fascinating being leaning on the arm of Don Juan.
She was dressed in white, a color made fashionable by Gerard's
painting of Psyche a white lawn trimmed with silver, and cut
low in accordance with the most daring modern fashion. Across
her shoulders she wore a red and white moire sash and under her
left breast was a small golden medal which the better-informed
recognized as the Order of the Sun. Many in the street knew her
by sight; others could identify her by her rich husky voice with
its overtones of raillery and challenge. She in white was Manuela
Saenz.

In the fevered preparation for the reception of Bolivar, society
had been able to learn only a little of her life since she had left
Quito, but that little was tantalizing. She was married, they knew,
to an Englishman named James Thorne, and she lived with him
in Lima, But no one knew more than that, nor could they guess
why she had chanced the long, hazardous trip to Quito at this
time. Yet the sparkling golden sun medal told much more than
mere gossip. It was the highest decoration that revolutionary Peru
could bestow, and whoever wore it must certainly have served the
insurgent cause with distinction.

Manuela had, in fact, arrived in Lima in 1817; and the year
following her marriage had been the gayest in her turbulent life.
As the wife of a rising merchant she was presented to the Viceroy,
attended the official functions, and became a familiar figure in the
high society of the city. She was even singled out for special favors
by the aging Micaek Villegas, the famous courtesan "La Perri-
choli," whose guest Manuela often was in her box at the Old Com-
edy Theater.

When James Thome was away on one of his ships, Manuela
became involved in activities of a very different sort. She moved
s am ryncr tlinsfi who were conspiring 1 against the

22 The Four Seasons of Manuela

Crown. Peru was then on a war footing. The royalists, stung by
the defeats in Chile, had at last recognized the dynamic insistence
of the revolution, and they were bringing down war stores from
Panama. General San Martin with his victorious insurgents was
moving up to the frontiers of Peru, and in Lima itself the friends
of freedom were plotting to undermine the Viceroy. In the baroque
salon of one of her countrywomen, Manuela took fervent part in
these conspiracies. It was a dangerous game, and the fact that
her husband was English would not have saved her had she been
discovered. Still she had run the risks. In her saya and manto,
habiliments loved by the women of Lima, she could move about
under effective disguise, for the elastic gown enveloped the body,
and the silk veil covering the head allowed only one mobile eye
to look out upon the world. In such a garb (it was considered a
horrible breach of manners to pull back a woman's veil) women
might enter the rooms of their lovers and cuckold their husbands
in the light of day without fear of discovery. The saya and manto
clung, displaying with every short step the delicious movements
of the body; the costume was one of the miracles of nature; it
filled men's minds with amazement. And to Manuela it was a won-
derful disguise, for under her dress she could transport seditious
proclamations from secret printing presses to those who would
paste them all over the walls of Lima in the dark of night.

It was intrigue especially suited to Manuela's talents, and it
brought her a certain anonymous fame when the Viceroy de-
clared, "I have been brought by the Public Prosecutor a pile
of proclamations introduced into this capital by an unknown
woman."

But Manuela's double life as society matron and revolutionary
plotter could not remain undiscovered forever; and in time James
Thorne found it out. And James Thome did not like it. As a for-
eigner, he was supposed to be above the battle. Besides, he was a
businessman and did not approve of revolution; it disturbed busi-
ness, it multiplied the problems with officials. He was moreover
a Catholic traditionalist, and already this revolution was taking

The Coming of the Demigod 28

an anticlerical turn; it had a distinct antireligious odor. He not
only refused Manuela's suggestion to help the patriot cause with
money; he ordered her to desist. And that meant trouble, the first
real rift in their marriage. For no one ever really ordered Manuela
to do anything. She acted exactly as she pleased.

So she continued to work for the revolution, and in 1820 she
gained a notable victory. Her half brother Jose Maria Saenz was
a captain in the Numancia Regiment of the royalist army. Manuela
was able to persuade him, and through him his fellow officers, to
swing their forces to the patriot side. This defection from the
Crown caused the breakdown of the capital's entire defenses, and
Lima fell into chaos. People poured into the city from outside to
take refuge behind its great walls, and the five gates were heavily
guarded for fear of direct assault by the montoneras, the fierce
mounted partisans of General San Martin. On July 21, 1821, pa-
triot armies moved up to the gates of the city and it fell without
a shot. They entered Lima in a snowfall of confetti and rose petals,
in the face of many a duke and count and marquis who only a fort-
night before had sworn undying fealty to the King of Spain; they
too put bicolored cockades in their hats and joined the people in
delirious celebration.

It had been, Manuela thought, something like what was hap-
pening now in Quito; but here there were among the nobility few
dissenters to the new Republic. In the distance she could make
out a mass of cavalrymen approaching the city to a crescendo of
cheers. Below her the Lord Mayor, holding his silk hat in his free
hand, quickly mounted his horse and galloped off with two offi-
cers to welcome the entourage* Now there was more confusion
at the Larrea doorway as the servants, rolling wine casks before
them, tried to force a passage through the crowd. For tonight, in
this very mansion, there would be a grand victory ball in honor
of Bolivar. But the press of people was too great for the servants;
they had to call on the aid of the soldiers. There was a great push-
ing and shoving before the task was done, to the accompaniment
o ribald comment and advice from the onlookers. Some of the

24 The Four Seasons of Manuela

younger gentry joined in the chaffering, among them the sharp-
tongued Manuela.

That was just what you should expect of "La Saenz," the eyes
of the ancient dames on the balconies seemed to say; and they
looked long and disapprovingly at her with their quizzing glances.
She had kept Quito in turmoil for all the years of her youth, she
had been a hellion. She had a positive genius for finding a human
weakness and mocking it. She showed neither humility nor maid-
enly modesty. She was aggressive, self-confident and volatile
in turn gay, sensitive, quick-tempered and courageous. Of course
they understood the reason; she had been unwanted, unloved, a
bastard without a position in society naturally she was as she
was. And now this . . . she was back in Quito again, made wel-
come in the Larrea house, and flaunting a patriotic decoration
from Peru.

Yet in fact the Order of the Sun was more than a mere decora-
tion; it was the badge of a new republican nobility. On the 23rd of
January of that very year Manuela Saenz de Thome had joined
an impressive group of one hundred twelve women, outstanding
patriots of Lima, who were to receive this honor. They had pa-
raded through the streets to the former palace of the Viceroy.,
where impressive ceremonies took place. Manuela stood among
the great ladies of Lima, many of whom bore ancient titles of
nobility the Countess de la Vega, the Marchioness of Torre
Tagle, the Countess of San Isidro and there she was decorated
with the most coveted order in the New World. It seemed hardly
possible that within the seven years since she had left Quito in
disgrace she had . . .

"Bolivar! Bolivar! Bolivar!'* The voices of the city seemed to
well up in a single word. As if in answer to the call, the parade
of approaching officers stopped, and a squadron of lancers rode
out to draw up in single file on either side of the road. Then, from
the midst of the brilliantly uniformed figures, a single horseman
emerged and came forward alone. It was Bolivar.

He was mounted on Pastor, his favorite white horse, which he

The Coming of the Demigod 25

held on a snaffle and gently pricked with his spurs. The animal
danced and cavorted, its ironshod hoofs striking a shower of sparks
from the cobblestones, its neck curving in a high swan-like arch
a fitting mount for a demigod. And a demigod the people ex-
pected, for so great was Bolivar's renown, so heroic his life, so won-
derful his achievements in war and peace, that even at the early
age of thirty-nine he had been deified in the popular imagination.
His physique was not godlike he was a short man, with delicate
hands and small feet that a woman could well envy but one
could see that his body was mobile, meant for action; and as he
bowed to the tumult of cheers with proud grace, yet with humility,
his figure seemed to grow, and one became unaware that he was
not tall.

Bolivar was scarcely a handsome man; his complexion was
darkly tanned, his face narrow and his expression somber, his
strong mouth and beautiful teeth hidden under a bristling guard's
mustache. But his deep-set black eyes were lively and penetrating,
and his quick smile was utterly charming. In contrast to his staff
officers, whose uniforms blazed with enough medals and gold lace
to please the barbaric tastes of an Inca, the Liberator wore a plain
high-collared tunic with a single medal, and tight trousers of white
doeskin. Now, in the saddle before this great and admiring throng,
his very bearing showed the gallantry, the gay impetuosity, the
courtliness and the courage that were his qualities that could be
summed up in one Spanish word: hombria, manhood. Manhood
indeed, or perhaps an excess of virility; for here was a man to
whom the favors of women were as necessary as meat and drink.
This too was a man who loved glory; and even now, as he rode
along taking the cheers of the people, one could see that he was
ecstatic with the public acclaim.

For those who saw this Bolivar, it was difficult to believe that
behind the public figure lay a different and deeper personality.
Everything profound loves the mask. And behind this mask was
the genius of the South Americas the soaring imagination, the
sense of organization, the strategy in planning campaigns, the

26 The four Seasons of Manuela

knowledge of men, the ability to attract loyal followers which
had given actuality to the dream of independence. Bolivar's pro-
tean mind seized upon everything; he arranged battles, diplo-
macy, education; he designed medals and uniforms; he planned
his public appearances as a choreographer would a ballet. There
never was a wasted movement in Bolivar; he used strategy alike in
war and diplomacy and love. His speech reflected his mind
sensuous, sometimes ornate and elaborate, or again simple with a
simplicity a bit studied and sometimes overdone. And behind all
these contradictions was an immensely powerful will; for Bolivar
had battled men, mountains and even the elements to arrive at
his present glory.

As he rode on toward the plaza, bowing this way and that
leaning down here to accept a flower from a child, there to grasp
the hand of a wounded soldier there was scarcely a man of those
cheering thousands who did not know the events of his life,
scarcely a woman who had not heard the intimate details of his
prodigious love affairs. Simon Bolivar had been born in Venezuela
in 1783, the descendant of an ancient family of great wealth and
nobility he was a marquis in his own right. Though he had been
reared in the sprawling hacienda of San Mateo, where tough and
wild cowboys herded immense herds of cattle, his education was
adequate for the place and time. Geography and literature he had
from Andres Bello, an incipient revolutionist; the elements of
arithmetic he learned from a Capuchin monk who had the reputa-
tion of being a savant. More important was Simon Rodriguez, mas-
ter of French and English, an ill-balanced, charming mental vaga-
bond and complete libertine and scholar, even though he filled
his charge with the sentimental romanticism of Rousseau. It was
this unfrocked priest who gave Bolivar his love of nature and life,
and developed the purple gaud in his writing.

At the impressionable age of seventeen, already adept in love.
Bolivar visited Paris with the Marquis de Uztaris, then went to
Spain to finish his education at the Royal Military Academy. And
even though he spoke the soft lisping patois of Venezuela and his

The Coming of the Demigod 27

complexion was cafe au lait, he instantly charmed the court of
Madrid. Soon after his arrival at least so the gossips said he
had replaced Godoy, the "Prince of Peace/' as Queen Luisa's lover.
Even at this age Bolivar was reputed as one who made love with
the trembling passions of a man beset.

His marriage in 1802 to Maria Teresa, the daughter of the Mar-
quis de Toro, was an idyll of tragedy; for almost as soon as they
returned from Spain to Venezuela, she died of yellow fever. Left
young, and rootless, and prodigiously rich, Bolivar again went
back to Europe. He moved through Spain and Italy; then, at-
tracted by the rising star of Napoleon, he settled down in Paris to
witness the birth of empire and to live the sybaritic life of a man
of fashion.

Yet he had his serious moments. Bolivar was much affected by
Napoleon, whose military and diplomatic successes were worthy
of profound study, and whose extreme simplicity of dress the
Liberator was to emulate. The Corsican's influence went deep; as
a Frenchman who knew him well later said, "The Emperor was
Bolivar s ideal."

And then there was Humboldt. The great scientist, then ap-
proaching the height of his powers, had just returned from five
years of travel in South America, and was in Paris seeing his pub-
lications through the press. The two men met at the salon of
Fanny du Villars to whom Bolivar was linked by ties more inti-
mate than mere acquaintanceship. Their talk turned to the Bolivar
hacienda, which Humboldt had visited in Simon's absence, and
then later to the political position of Spanish America.

At length Bolivar remarked, "In truth what a brilliant fate, that
of the New World if only its people were freed of their yoke."

And Humboldt had responded, "I believe that your country is
ready for its independence. But I cannot yet see the man who is
to achieve it, to lead it."

It was the sentence which set off the second American revolu-
tion.

Everyone knew the course of Bolivar's life after that episode. It

28 The Four Seasons of Manuela

was war, war, war; he lost his fortune, watched Venezuela dissolve
in chaos, escaped to Jamaica and came back to fight again. At
length, with an army resembling the ragamuffins of Frangois Vil-
lon, he outmaneuvered Spain's most famous general, marched a
thousand miles through the Andes, and routed the Spanish at
Boyaca in Colombia. Then, on December 17, 1819, he formed
the union of Gran Colombia, a union which would include the
Spanish Viceroyalties of Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador when
they would be liberated. This was the first step in a plan of con-
tinental proportions already taking shape in Boliva/s inmost
thoughts.

And today in Quito the design was moving toward completion.
Ecuador had been won.

Now he was nearing the plaza, and the little girls in their gaudy
angel costumes ran before him scattering flowers. From the over-
hanging balconies rose petals cascaded down like confetti, and
wreaths of laurel festooned with the colors of Gran Colombia fell
at his feet. Men saluted him, and women leaned forward to catch
the dark glance of his deep-set, disturbing eyes. Just ahead of him
was the great square, where the aldermen of the city were ready
to extend the official welcome. It was time to await his escort, the
long file of uniformed horsemen coming up behind him four
abreast, their drawn sabers flashing in the sun. He reined in the
impatient Pastor, and glanced idly at the Larrea balcony over-
head, then at the cheering crowds at the highway's edge.

From her high place at Juan de Larrea's side, Manuela leaned
forward in sudden excitement. This was he at last the greatest
man on the continent, the embodiment of all her dreams, her high
enthusiasm, the cause for which she had fought so long. A man of
fascination too, whose face showed suffering and thought, whose
supple body moved gracefully with every prancing half step of
his magnificent white horse. She took up a laurel wreath and
tossed it toward his feet then watched in horror as the thing
veered crazily in the air and struck him full in the side of the face.

The Liberator's head jerked angrily toward the balcony. Then

The Coming of the Demigod 29

lie saw the culprit her dark eyes wide and luminous, the skin
flushed a dull red, the white hands pressed to her white breast
where hung the golden emblem of the Sun.

Bolivar bowed and smiled forgiveness into the eyes of Manuela

Saenz.

3

THE VICTORY BALL

THE LARREA HOUSE was ablaze. From the salon on the upper floor,
flooded in light by a giant candelabrum, came the disorganized
first notes of an orchestra tuning, and the sounds drifted across the
Quito night. All afternoon, following the triumphant entrance of
the Liberator, confusion had fallen on the mansion as servants
bustled about arranging rooms and refreshments for the Victory
Ball; but by the time vespers had come and gone everything was
in readiness. Outside Indian lackeys with their black hair pow-
dered, in satin waistcoats and knee breeches albeit barefooted,
held torches to guide the guests over the unlighted cobblestone
streets.

The streets of Quito in the early darkness were massed with
celebrating people. Soldiers drunk on chicha careened down the
gutters; wenching went on openly in the small plazas where in the
light of the fireworks one could see love on display in every con-
ceivable design; here and there were open brawls. The black-
cloaked night watch tried to control the popular exuberance, but
with scant success. This was a riotous night, and in the hurly-burly
the nobility of Quito had to take their chances. The distinguished
guests of the Victory Ball began to appear early. A few elderly
ladies, still clinging with a certain autumnal poignancy to the
things of the past, arrived in sedan chairs carried by Indians in
livery, for in all the city there were no carriages. But most of the
elite picked their way over the cobblestones guided by servants
with small hurricane lamps while other lackeys held over their

The Victory Ball 31

heads heavily brocaded umbrellas, which this society affected
as a mark of distinction. Everyone of consequence was coining
to the ball and in every style of dress that had flourished since
the halcyon times of Carlos III of Spain.

The old gentlemen wore the silk knee breeches and florid waist-
coats of the eighteenth century, even the tricome hat and pow-
dered periwig. Those of middle years arrived in Spanish court
dress of 1795 a narrow frock coat in striped fabric, with large
ornate buttons and broad flapping lapels. But the younger men,
the products of the revolutionary age, came en frac, in trousers
strapped under varnished boots, surtouts or caped overcoats, and
high beaver hats. These were the convinced republicans; and to
show their democratic sympathies, even on a night of such mob
license, they walked the crowded streets alone.

The women too reflected the same battle of the styles in their
gala costumes. Those who still dreamed the dreams of the old
regime came in stiff brocade, high heels, and powdered wigs with
walking sticks and quizzing glasses. All the young ladies, and those
who prided themselves on their modernity, wore daring dresses of
brocaded gauze or pink and white organdy; their small feet were
covered by satin ballet slippers, and their hair piled high in Gre-
cian knots. There were even a few scandalously daring these
who tripped over the cobblestones dressed a la sauvage, their hair
cropped short about as revolutionary a gesture as a woman
could make in Quito.

The doorway of the mansion was a huge nail-studded portal
over which the Larreas* arms were emblazoned. Inside, the patio
was a beauty of flowers planted around a stone fountain on whose
crest a carved cherub embraced the neck of a swan. From its up-
turned beak poured a stream of cold water, piped down from the
snow fields high in the mountains around the city.

In the ballroom on the second floor, General Sim6n BoKvar and
his host stood ready to receive the arriving guests. A dignified
room this, long and wide, with tall latticed windows and a great
crystal chandelier bathing it in candle-glow. The chairs, settees

32 The Four Seasons of Manuela

and small tables in straight-lined Directoire style, ornamented in
bronze against red damask, bad been pushed back to clear the
floor for dancing. Beside the door, the six liveried Indians who
were the orchestra sat ready with their strings and woodwinds. In
the adjoining room, cluttered with the ornamental baroque furni-
ture heavily inlaid with gold for which Quito was famous, other
Indians presided over the wine bottles and punch bowl at a long
carved table.

From his place under a canopy of tricolored silk at the end of
the ballroom, Simon Bolivar watched the arriving guests with
interest. He had come with strict military punctilio, promptly at
eight and in excellent humor. For the festive occasion he had laid
aside his usual simple uniform, and instead wore a red military
jacket heavily braided with gold; on the epaulets that protruded
far beyond his shoulders were three golden stars, symbol of his
rank as Lieutenant General of the allied armies of liberation. His
hair was brushed up from his forehead, and his black lacquered
Wellington boots had extra-high heels; besides, he stood on a dais
raised above floor level, so that the illusion of tallness was com-
plete,

Now, as guests streamed into the room, Bolivar, leaning lightly
on his dress sword, was fully at ease. A finished gentleman, raised
in luxury, well-traveled in Europe, and proficient in French, his
manners were exquisite. To each lady who was brought forward to
be presented, he gave full attention, kissing her hand and looking
at her with the warm eager intimacy of a man accustomed to con-
quests. Toward men he showed an easy camaraderie, a friendly
descent from the pinnacles of his fame. Well-known patriots whose
names he knew for he had a prodigious memory he greeted
with a Latin abrazo, folding his long arms about them gently
and patting their backs. For everyone he had a familiar word
or question, for his host and his aide-de-camp stood by, ready
to give him in hurried whispers his cue to every stranger.
There was little doubt about it; everyone was captivated by his
charm.

The Victory Ball 33

In the Larrea mansion this night Bolivar seemed to have
achieved the heights of his ambition. Independence was all but
won; and the glory of it was his. Still if he had any weakness it
was his intoxication with the aura popularis. Yet here, for the first
time in all those long years of fighting, he had a chance to relax.
Here the atmosphere was something like that which he had known
in Europe, with the refinements and small luxuries which years of
campaigning had denied him. The room was filled with happy
sounds the murmur of violins, the rustle of women's dresses,
and above all the sustained hum of laughter and talk in half a
dozen different languages.

The war for independence had taken on an international flavor.
For long it had been only an American affair a matter of half-
naked lancers, their long knives tied to bamboo shafts, against the
well-armed legions of the Spanish army and Bolivar himself
was only an intelligent leader of wild guerrilla bands. But by the
year of 1822 a great change had occurred. With his victories and
the formation of Gran Colombia, Bolivar had stepped into the
councils of Europe. Many veteran officers of the continental wars
had sought employment with him after Waterloo, and they had
found places in his army. His staff was now filled with Europeans
English, Scots, Irish, Germans, Poles and even Russians, all had
commissions in his regiments.

All about the room now were handsome young leaders of the
foreign contingent, dressed in the uniforms of their regiments
dark green jackets with cuffs and lapels edged in gold, and
strapped dark green trousers piped with gold. There was Sowerby
from Bremen, Duckbury from London, Captain Hallowes of Kent,
all so young they had not yet been able to grow the bristling mus-
taches considered necessary for an officer. The Irish were there
in force O'Connor of the fighting O'Connors of Dublin, very
attractive to the ladies because of his blond hair; and William
Fergusson, impetuous and courageous, with a heart as huge as
his appetite for Irish whisky, a man whose rashness made Bolivar
no end of difficulties, but still one much liked for all that. "A good

34 The Four Seasons of Manuela

friend/' Bolivar called him, "obliging and generous . . . also with
much affection for me.*'

But O'Leaiy was the favorite. As trim as a bantam fighting
cock, Daniel O'Leary of Belfast had been on Bolivar's staff since
arriving at nineteen with the green of Ireland still on him. It
was Captain O'Leary who, white flag in hand, had entered the
royalist lines during the recent battle for Quito carrying the de-
mand for surrender. Although he was the calmest of the Irish
contingent, he could when aroused forget his Spanish and scream
the vulgarities of a Belfast brothel-keeper. O'Leary was now only
twenty-two, yet he had the grasp of Bolivar's greatness; he was
already assembling all of the leader's papers so as to preserve this
glory.

The foreign legionnaires were giving the war a needed pro-
fessional direction and a touch of glamour, but Bolivar's field com-
manders were all South Americans. Such a one was Antonio de
Sucre, whom he could now see leading a formal polonaise with
the attractive Mariana, daughter of the Marquis de Solanda.

Sucre, the victor of the battle for Quito, was only twenty-seven
and already a field marshal, yet his delicate face was more that of
a courtier than a fighter. The huge sideburns coming down almost
to his lips did not hide the finely penciled features which showed
something of his heritage, for his family originally came from
Flanders and belonged to the Walloon nobility. Sucre, a native
of Venezuela, had left the university at sixteen to ride with
Bolivar's guerrillas, and had risen rapidly through merit. He was
the revolution's greatest field general, the white knight of the
wars for independence. He would never lose a battle, except the
one with himself. He was capable, quiet, fastidious; disliking the
tropical luxuriance of his companions-in-arms, he had a delicate
spirit, and was as sensitive as mimosa. And now even more. He
was terribly in love with Mariana.

Here naturally enough was Cordoba, young Jose Maria Cor-
doba, a general at twenty-three, whose heroic charge a month
ago had broken the resistance of the godos and brought victory.

The Victory Ball 35

A magnificent and dangerous man, a man made for war, aggressive
and violent despite his finely chiseled face and Ms gentle, melan-
choly eyes. He had become a soldier at fourteen; he rode with
the llanews, learned war, loved it and fought it with frenzy. He
was a Colombian, and immensely proud; but he lacked balance
and imagination, and these were fatal flaws. And near him, talking
and laughing over a glass of port, stood that other polished man of
violence, Scottish Rupert Hand.

Simon Bolivar from the vantage point of the dais could see them
all, these men who had been, in one way or another, the elements
of his glory. Many had been his comrades-in-arms during the ter-
rible years of struggle; many others, now met for the first time, he
knew by reputation or through long correspondence. It was a
strange and wonderful gathering, for here before him as he later
recalled was the entire cast that was to enact the drama of his
life in the coming years. They were all here, save one. And then
she came.

The Victory Ball was at its height; enough wine had flowed to
break down the stiffness of a society unused to the free and easy
ways of off-duty soldiers. Suddenly there was a stir at the entrance,
a break in the rhythm of laughter and voices. The dancers con-
tinued the stately steps of the contredanse, but mechanically now;
for all eyes had turned toward the door. Someone was just arriving,
pushing into the room through the onlookers near the doorway
a woman marked by her easy, full laughter.

As she came toward him now, weaving her way between the
dancing couples, Bolivar saw it was a young woman, twenty-odd
years of age perhaps, in the full burst of her irregular beauty. She
walked light and erect, her every movement smooth and graceful,
with more than a hint of sensuousness, even abandon, underlying
the controlled delicacy of step and gesture. She wore a light
organdy in the modern mode, the skirt falling in long half -reveal-
ing folds from the high waistline to the tips of her satin ballet
slippers. Across the low decolletage, half hiding the lovely ivory
of her breasts, was the red and white moire ribbon of her decora-

36 The Four Seasons of Manueh

tion; and under her left breast glittered the golden Order of the
Sun. Her complexion too was clear ivory, her cheeks touched with
color by the excitement of the moment. Her long hair lay across
her head like a tiara, in braids interwoven with fresh white flowers.

Juan de Larrea, in black tailcoat and knee breeches, bowed his
withdrawal to Bolivar and hurried forward to meet her. On his
arm she came toward the dais to be presented, honoring the hero
with a supple curtsy as he bowed over her slender fingers.

"Your Excellency ... La Sefiora Manuela Saenz de Thome."

Manuela looked on him with open admiration; and he, always
alive to lure of women, did nothing to hide his interest in her.
But there were others waiting to be presented to the Liberator. As
he kissed her hand and looked into the dark, mischievous eyes, this
might have been just another attractive woman in his woman-filled
life. But Manuela was twenty-four and he was thirty-nine; it was
a dangerous conjuncture of ages.

As the evening wore on and Bolivar exhausted his stock of
panegyrics to those being presented, his eyes picked out Manuela
first dancing a polonaise, and very cleverly, then later mixing
with the group around the wine table. She was speaking to the
legionnaires in their native English and of course they loved it.
She had learned the language at her husband's side and, since
he entertained sea captains, Manuela's English was spiced with
piquant expressions. She told droll and risque stories; and one of
them was so couched as to cause Fergusson to explode in his Irish
whisky. Manuela was drawing attention to herself as usual and
enjoying it thoroughly. Now to the horror of the other ladies she
was dancing not with a partner on the ballroom floor, but alone,
for the benefit of the officers around her. Her skirt held high in
both hands, her body twisting in sinuous suggestion, she began
to writhe the notorious napanga. "That is not a dance," said the
Bishop of Quito, who once witnessed it, "that should be called the
resurrection of the flesh."

It was obvious that Bolivar would be drawn to this unpredict-

The Victory Ball 87

able woman. Since her half brother Colonel Jose Maria Saenz was
now a member of his staff, he already knew something about her
that she was born in Quito, that she was illegitimate, that she
had served the patriot cause with distinction. If he wanted to
know more and he entered into love affairs as he entered into
war, with extravagant attention to details and without doubts or
scruples there was one at hand who could tell him. This was
Colonel Andres Santa Cruz, the tall young commander of the
Peruvian Legion, a native of Lima.

Santa Cruz could indeed tell much about Manuela's life in Lima
society, and about her important place in the revolutionary move-
ment. But of that possibly significant figure, Manuela's husband,
he knew little, or little of nothing.

James Thome, in fact, was somewhat of a mystery to everyone;
no one knew more of him than it pleased him to tell of himself, and
that was not much. It was known that he had met Manuela
through her father in Panama in 1816, that a marriage contract had
been arranged, that Simon Saenz had provided her a dowry, after
which he sailed to Spain, and that Thome and Manuela had gone
to Lima in 1817 to be married.

Santa Cruz could add little more to this picture. Lima had been
Thome's home since 1812, when he had arrived from Cadiz a
prisoner, people said, though for what cause no one ever knew. He
was a native of Aylesbury in England, a short stocky man with
gray eyes, and oddly enough a devout Catholic. His age he never
revealed, but he was obviously some twenty years older than his
wife. His business affairs were slightly mysterious too. In some
fashion he had gained the favor of the Viceroy; he acquired prop-
erty and ships, and traded all along the coast from Panama south-
ward to Valparaiso in Chile. He had become, by the time of his
marriage, a man of substance and influence but he remained a
cold and enigmatic personality, formal, correct, and aloof.

Now Thome had gone on a matter of business to Panama, and
here was his lovely young wife gracing the Victory Ball in Quito,
and attracting Bolivar's notice; but it was only later in the evening,

38 The Four Seasons of Manuela

after lie had danced with all the ladies as the decorum of the oc-
casion demanded, that he caught up with her. Bolivar loved to
dance. He could spend whole days in the saddle and then find
relaxation in dancing half the night. On the ballroom floor as on
horseback, he was skillful, graceful and at ease. Besides, he used
the dance the physical contact, the heightened emotions, the
press of hand and body for its original purpose, as a prelude to
love. While dancing he could make casual exploratory caresses, to
be disowned if the woman objected, or followed by more explicit
advances if she did not.

In Manuela he found his ideal, and they danced, danced for
hours to the minuets and the contredanses of the thin-toned six-
piece orchestra. They were fully aware, they must have been, that
all eyes were upon them. But seemingly they did not care; this
perfect rapport, this complementing of one another, was new to
both of them, and far too precious to bring to an end so soon.
Manuela too loved the dance; she was in turn gay, serious, inconse-
quential, tender, risquee, revealing at every moment a new and
startling pattern of her kaleidoscopic personality. Bolivar im-
mediately became aware that this was no ordinary woman. Her
speech, her repartee, her bearing, her personal history, even her
acute summation of the people about them, were not the usual
equipment of the women he had known.

And he had known women, for women were vital to Simon
Bolivar. He was never without them at home, abroad, even on
his military expeditions. After the death of his wife, he said, "I
shall never marry again/' And he had kept that vow, giving himself
freely to passion, but avoiding any semblance of a lasting emo-
tional tie.

The names of his women had been legion, and some of them
were well known. In Paris, when he was a rich young man, he had
cuckolded one of Napoleon's generals and brought such joy to the
lady, Fanny du Villars, that twenty years later she sent him her
portrait and recalled their love. In Venezuela, while he alternately
chased and was pursued by the godos, his mistress had been the

The Victory Ball 39

lovely Isabel Soublette; and her brother, who had been a mere
subaltern in the army, rose spectacularly in the train of Eros.
Then there had been Josefina Nunez, his beloved "Pepita/ ? who
rode beside him through all the terrible campaigns in the llanos.
After that, during the lull of battle, it had been Anita Lenoit,
seduced in a hammock, who remembered him vividly and sought
him out years later.

He made love as the Russians operated their military com-
missary: he lived off the country, and one could follow his loves
by a map of his campaigns. In the fortress city of Cartagena it
was this young lady, in Bogota it was someone else. In Cali, when
he was on his way to Quito, it was Bernardina "You are the only
one in the world for me," he wrote to his "celestial angel." But no
sooner had the ink dried on this letter than he found another
"angel" in Popayan. The catalogue of them was long and detailed
and in his fashion Bolivar had loved them all, writing them all
the fervent love letters, and whispering much of the same things
into their ears. But never once had he fallen into their cleverly
laid snares. And now this Manuela. . . .

They danced together almost continuously, weaving in and out
among the other couples, losing themselves as much as possible in
the crowd, avoiding the walls where sat the onlookers who looked
at them disapprovingly from their quizzing glasses. Yet as the
evening wore on, their very inconspicuousness became conspicu-
ous. The ancient dowagers, in wigs and patches, nodded and whis-
pered behind their fans, for here was the hero of the hour paying
all his attention and very personal attention to that notori-
ous little trull, that Manuela.

Then suddenly they were gone. They had danced, talked,
laughed together half the night; they had gone in together to the
wines and sweetmeats of the midnight supper; they had returned
together to the ballroom. Everyone had watched them, no one had
seen them go. Sim6n Bolivar and Manuela had vanished.

4

TRIUMPHS OF A
HE TAIRA

IHEIR amoretto was all over Quito the next morning.

It set in motion all the loose-lipped volubility of little Quito,
where nothing, not even matters as secretive as love, could be
hidden from the all-knowing gossips of its provincial society. They
had eagerly discussed every step of Manuela's earlier affairs, in-
venting what they did not know; now they found in this new
affair (and she a married woman too) complete harmony with
her demimondaine past. So she was after all the same Manuela.
All the patina of respectability the fine clothes, her marriage to
a wealthy merchant, her new position in Lima society, the decora-
tions and the honors none of these could hide her true nature.
She was little else than a trollop. Now she had taken the hero
from under their very noses; and the women were furious. And
jealous, too; for there were many in Quito that morning who
would have liked to have Manuela's place as the chosen object of
Bolivar's love-making.

Manuela was well aware of prying eyes as, in the late morning,
she made her way to the hospital to do her share in tending the
wounded. She tried not to be obvious; yet she knew that her in-
ward glow was apparent to anyone that people were watching
her that they were talking. For they were repeating that morn-
ing the old wives" tale: like mother, like daughter. They had seen
the same pattern before; and they were remembering Joaquina
Aispuru and her love affair with Sim6n Sdenz.

Triumphs of a Hetaira 41

It had been Joaquina's one peccadillo, yet it brought shame to
the whole Aispuru family, and they hated Manuela thereafter,
regarding her as the living symbol of her mother's dishonor. Poor
Joaquina's life, after Manuela's birth, had been a dismal succession
of days in church and nights in prayer; a mildewy scriptural aura
pervaded her room, making it reek of Jeroboam and Saint John,
And although she had long since died in the odor of sanctity,
Manuela remained, a perfect target for the venomous tongues of
her relatives.

Even as Senora de Thome went about her work at the hospital,
with her black slave Jonotas always at hand, the malignant sug-
gestions followed her path. She was, it was whispered, a wanton
who could not pass up any man, she was sterile and insatiable. It
was Jonotas, the pock-marked, frizzled-headed slave with the
libidinous eyes, who gave substance to these calumnies; she
adored her mistress, bathed her, dressed her, and gave all the
outward evidences of idolatry. She accompanied Manuela every-
where, and the odd figure of the Negro woman in her soldier's uni-
form, red turban, and jeweled earrings was becoming one of the
sights of the city. In her off hours she gathered the gossip of the
capital and carried it to Manuela in lurid detail; there was reason
for people to say, "Joaot&s * s a mirror of Manuela." She was also
gaining a reputation in the low-class houses as a mimic, and it
seeped out that many a grande dame of Quito had been pilloried
by her caricature. With a borrowed lorgnette, a swathe of muslin
resembling a wig, and an amazing ear for turns of speech and
voice, Jonotas could ridicule the most dignified of aristocrats. It
was scandalous to allow one's slave and her obscenities, they
were revolting enough to make a sergeant major blush. . . .

All of this was, naturally, fuel for the Aispurus. The real reason
for their malice they never disclosed: Manuela was bringing legal
proceedings against them.

Simon Bolivar was unaware of the complications that his casual
love-making had brought on. Nothing had happened that was
unusual to him; he had encountered an attractive woman ? he had

42 The Four Seasons of Manuela

been lavish, in his praises of love, and she had succumbed. It was
not a situation demanding special attention. Besides, he was im-
mersed in affairs of state.

In the Escorial-cold rooms that had once been the royal offices,
Bolivar was busily creating a new order. All day long he paced
up and down, dictating to three secretaries at once, while com-
plaining in his soft patois that they could not keep up with him.
A stream of decrees left his chambers: reformation of the educa-
tional system, revision of the Treasury, appointments of new gov-
ernors, new judges, new laws, new names for the streets. Letters
were being dispatched to the far points of South America: to
Lima, to thank General San Martin for the contingent of Peruvian
troops that had aided in the victory at Quito; to Bogota, a thou-
sand miles north, demanding of his Vice-President money and
yet more money to complete the military operations. There were
interrupted consultations with General Sucre, Military Governor
of the Province, and lengthy discussions with Church fathers dis-
turbed by Bolivar's demand for their store of silver plate to help
pay for wars still to be fought. Bolivar acted like Prometheus un-
bound; his energy flowed out in all directions. Every letter that
reached him was answered, no matter how lowly the writer. Did
a wounded soldier beg for money? He was paid from Bolivar's
personal funds. Was there evidence against an unworthy judge?
He was dragged out to the gibbet. Thus it went all day long, until
he I$t everyone about him in a state of exhaustion.

Only when night closed in, and the cold of a city two miles high
b^gan to penetrate the unheated rooms, did Bolivar allow himself
rest. A gkss of wine brought by his major-domo, and he drifted
into a sensuous languor; then his thoughts went to Manuela. It was
time to call Jose Palacios his servant since boyhood, bodyguard,
watchdog of his silver service and send him with his mastiffs
to carry the simple, meaningful message: "Come to me. Come.
Come now."

And Manuela came, disguised in an immense cloak, guided by
Jose Palacios's hurricane lamp, flanked by the two huge dogs.

Triumphs of a Hetaira 43

The streets were dark, and empty, save for a few figures in the
shadows. The only sounds were the splash of water in the foun-
tains, and the distant call of the night watch "Ave Maria, a
serene night: all is well.**

Quito by night was none too safe for the wayfarer, but with
the straw-colored mastiffs for protection, and the great-hearted
Palacios leading the way, Manuela had nothing to fear. At the
hour of her love tryst the plaza was silent, save for the gentle drip
of water from the carved stone trumpet of Fame into the fountain
pool beneath. No figure moved on the broad pavement which had
seen so much carnage in the last decade; the palace, the Tuscany-
styled residence of the Royal Audience, was deserted too. All dark
except for one room Bolivar's room where the candles burned
fiercely.

There was something feverish in their affair. Perhaps it was the
insistent presence of war which gave their love a sense of sup-
pressed excitement; perhaps it was the knowledge that the end
must come too soon. And yet more. Manuela could love without
consequences, she knew that now. She was sterile, "a woman of
singular conf ormation," said a Scottish doctor who once examined
her; she would never know the normal fulfillment of motherhood,
and so her deepest impulses insistently demanded other outlets.

Bolivar too was driven by powerful urges, and he was habitually
prodigal with his energies, in this direction as in all others. Besides,
he was already in the first stage of tuberculosis, a lethal disease
which exaggerated his passions. It had killed his mother, and he
was predisposed to it. Now, after the privations of his warring life,
the ceaseless drawing on the capital of his energy for these past
years, all this allowed the disease to take hold. Even his face sug-
gested it at times; a touch of fever made his eyes glitter like jewels,
and his skin had a dry, almost varnished look.

Theirs was the ardor of a man and a woman who had met in
tropical violence. In the cold Quito night, with only a brass brazier
to heat the frigid room, oblivious for the moment to all else, two

44 The Four Seasons of Manuela

revolutionaries exchanged their burning kisses. And in those naked
battles by night Bolivar for once met his equal It was not alone
her physical passion, draining energies sapped by punishing days
of work, it was something deeper than that, more lasting - some
inward need of hers, crying out to something he had scarcely
known was in him.

He had not seen it at first, but now Bolivar knew that the love
Manuela offered was a love that could engulf him. It suggested a
relationship that, since the death of his wife, he had endeavored
with all his being to avoid. And he was adept at avoiding it. He
had been through all this many times before, and he had a proper
sense of proportion. Manuela was mere woman, and he was after
bigger game; he was out to seduce a continent.

From now on Manuela's problems suddenly multiplied. When
she had arrived in Quito, in a manner triumphant, there had been
only a single battle to wage the skirmish with the Aispuru
family. Now the immediate consequences of her love affair with
Simon Bolivar were upon her: the skirmish with the Aispurus had
become a pitched battle; and she would have to face, in one form
or another, the violent reaction of her husband when he heard the
scandal Yet all these personal dilemmas had to be put aside now
to make way for the really salient one the war.

Manuela was needed now. In Lima, she had organized the
women into war units; she had collected money to build ships;
she had managed a house-to-house canvass for cloth for uniforms.
Here in her native land she drew on that experience. Accompanied
by Jonotas in her red turban and pretty Natan in a modish coiffure,
she descended on the ladies of Quito. Every house was turned
into a factory where noblewoman and Indian servant worked side
by side on uniforms for the new army. Then there was the collec-
tion of money, of jewels, of silver plate for the financing of the
next campaign. Manuela was everywhere, organizing, pleading,
cajoling, even forcing contributions with her sharp tongue, her
knowledge of ancient Quito scandals, and her skilled use of social

Triumphs of a Hetaira 45

blackmail. It brought many precious heirlooms to the public
war chest, but it did not help La Saenz in public esteem.

Meanwhile rumors of war filled the Quito air. The army was
going to march to the coast, to take Guayaquil by force in the
face of Peru's opposition no, it was going north to Bogota, or
over the mountains to the Amazon. General San Martin was
coming up to meet Bolivar no, he was going to Europe to find
a German prince for a nebulous Peruvian throne. There would
be peace in Peru no, there would be war, for the royalists were
poised back of Lima with ten thousand seasoned troops. So went
the talk, while new recruits were coming into the city every day;
and they all had to be uniformed.

Manuela had been through all this before. She knew what the
fight for independence cost, what it meant in the disruption of
private life, in sacrifices, in blood and tears. In war she was a
realist; and she was aware of its urgency. She sent to the Aispura
estate for eight mules whether legally hers or not was little to
the point for the transport service of General Sucre. Jonotas in
her soldier's uniform, riding the lead mule bareback, delivered
them to Sucre along with a letter from her mistress:

What I regret most is that our brave soldiers do not have all
that is needed. Nevertheless you may count on the slender re-
sources I possess; which, despite the fact that they are small, are
always at your disposal. I shall not call this a sacrifice, knowing it
to be only my duty.

Sucre was deeply touched, as much by the letter as he was by
the gift of the animals. He dismissed his secretary, and in his own
hand addressed her:

MY GRACIOUS LADY

The noble offer of your possessions for the defense of the state
is already suggested by your generosity. . . . Please accept the
gratitude of the whole corps of the Army of Liberation, in whose
name I am able to assure you that nothing gives them greater
pleasure than to know that there are heroines, such as yourself,
with whom they can share their glories. . . .

46 The Four Seasons of Manuela

But if Sucre called her a heroine, her relatives the Aispuras
called her something else. It had become a social war of attrition.
And for a reason obvious to Manuela: it was the legal action she
was bringing against them. Since her mother's death, and the
reading of her will, they had hated Manuela and feared her too.
For Joaquina, although conveniently married shortly before her
death, had retained her right to a share in the large family land-
holdings outside Quito, and that share she had left to Manuela by
a secret comunicato in her will. By the laws of Toledo, such a
comunicato was inviolable. When Manuela came of age, she de-
manded the ten thousand pesos which was the value of her in-
heritance. The Aispuras ignored her; they would have had to sell
the estate to raise the money for her. Still Manuela was a bom
fighter, whose bent it was to defend her rights under all circum-
stances. Even while in Lima she began proceedings in the courts
to force a settlement, and she had come to Quito to press her
suit in person.

Her love affair with General Bolivar would eventually become
known to her husband by this insistent family campaign. That
would doubtless mean trouble. Thorne was terribly possessive
and "more jealous than a Portuguese,'* she had already said of
him and he took marriage with the stiff propriety of an English-
man, rather than the casual grace of a Latin. For him, it was a
binding contract with the strictest of rules: the husband was un-
disputed master of home and family, the wife a mere chattel, with
no more rights than her spouse chose to allow. For her, reared in
licentious Quito and matured in the easy atmosphere of Lima
society, it was an arrangement of great social and economic con-
venience; strict fidelity was not among its obligations. Divorce was
impossible, but in the spirit of the times (and in Manuela's own
words), "Marriage marriage pledges one to nothing/*

So Manuela did not believe it wrong to give herself to Sim6n
Bolivar; it was doubtless a greater wrong to live a marriage with-
out love. She did not approve of looseness, she never took casual
lovers; no matter what die scandalmongers said of her affairs,

Triumphs of a Hetaira 47

they always sprang from real passion. Love was the touchstone in
matters of this sort, love alone the justification. And Bolivar's
fascination was tremendous; she did not question at all her right
to be his mistress. But Thome would scarcely sympathize with
that, or forgive it. To come to an understanding with him, to patch
up a pattern for living this was the disturbing prospect. And she
would have to face it. Complete separation from her husband had
not yet entered into the matter, and she could not force things.
For there was Simon Bolivar he could be terribly impersonal and
devious, and he gave not the slightest encouragement to any ideas
that this would be a permanent relationship.

The twelve evenings for their love was always discreetly
nocturnal - were complete and satisfying. Manuela comple-
mented his needs so fully that he did not, in this time in Quito,
look upon another woman. But these were only the surface ele-
ments of love. Something different, more profound, began to
creep into their relationship, something which gave balance and
depth to desire. Manuela knew as few of Bolivar's women had
known the value of empty space. She sensed instinctively when
to be tender and passionate, and when to listen in silence as talk-
ing restored equipoise to his passion-sated body. Bolivar gradually
discovered that Manuela was the only person in Quito to whom he
could speak with ease and perfect freedom of his inmost intentions
and motives. She would not betray him, since she wanted nothing;
it seemed, and it was true, that his hopes, his aspirations, his fears
were becoming also hers. So it was that after their passion had
been tranquilized in the cold apartment of the late royalist ad-
ministrator of Quito, Bolivar would pace up and down, throwing
out his thoughts as he walked. It was then that Manuela really
began to learn something about him and his ideals.

At first, these interminable wars for independence had had no
real meaning to her. She had first conceived them as an expression
of resentment against the godos, to whom she ascribed all the
difficulties of her childhood. They became in turn a blood revenge
against those who killed, imprisoned, exiled the ones she loved;

48 The Pour Seasons of Manuela

then a game to outwit the ponderous majesty of government; then
a desperate straggle for survival But the essential reason for it
all, the intellectual background o the revolution had never
touched her until now,

After three hundred years of fidelity to Spain, the colonies had
revolted. The origins of the independence movement were com-
plex; there were commercial reasons rising from limitation of
trade; there were social motives too, for only the Spanish-born
were given high offices. Besides, the idea of independence was
in the air; the successful revolt of the North American colonies
against England, the Revolution in France, infected all those of a
liberal caste of thought with the virus of freedom. There had been
abortive movements toward liberty as early as the 1780's. But
strangely enough it was Napoleon, an offspring of these revolu-
tions, who unintentionally initiated the South American revolt.
When his armies invaded Spain, forcing the reigning Bourbon off
the throne, he crowned his brother, Joseph Bonaparte, king; it was
then that the patriots in South America launched a protest they
refused to become vassals of a foreign prince. But Spain, even in
the throes of foreign occupation at home, revealed herself as an
implacable enemy of liberalism; she put down this mild-tempered
movement in her colonies with a display of carnage; the conserva-
tive revolution was choked in blood. Manuela knew how the war
had gone after that; she had lived through it here in Quito. But in
Venezuela, where Bolivar had fought, it had been war to the
death. For thirteen years he had fought through the plains, the
mountains, the jungles, and out of it all had come at last the thing
he had dreamed of, the thing Humboldts words had touched off
nearly two decades earlier: a great Republic, the provinces of
Venezuela, Colombia, Panama and now Ecuador united into the
federation called Gran Colombia.

It was clear to her now what Bolivar wanted. First, Spain must
be decisively defeated throughout the Americas. Then, out of
battle and the liberty of these many free states, a great empire
arising out of the Andes, half democratic, half feudal, which

Triumphs of a Hetaira 49

through a common policy would become one day the United
States of South America. And with the new form of government,
a new race: "The bond that united us to Spain has been severed
and we are neither Indians nor Europeans, yet are part of each."
It would not be easy to achieve. It would take men, treasure,
supplies; it would demand courage, sacrifices, persistence. And the
first requisite was unity: unity in feeling, unity in purpose, unity
in command:

As long as we do not unify our American government, I believe
that our enemies will have the advantage. We shall be inextrica-
bly caught in a web of civil war, and be shamefully beaten by
little gangs of bandits which pollute our country.

In order to obtain unity, then, there had to be a strong central
government, with strongly established power, to keep the state
from sinking into incompetence. That meant sharp limitations on
popular sovereignty. It was plain that Bolivar mistrusted the in-
stincts of the masses, especially the race that was "becoming."
They were not like the homogeneous people that formed the
United States in North America, who were almost wholly Anglo-
Saxon. Here in South America more than half were Indians. One
third of the knd was the Amazon Valley, where savages still lived
as they lived before the conquest. Throughout the Andes, the base
of the human equation was tie cholo, half Spaniard, half Indian,
containing within himself the conflicting emotions of each race.
Those who constituted the governing class were mainly of Spanish
descent, a thin veneer of competent officials who had survived the
civil wars. Discipline and authority the government must have to
put down the inconstancy of the masses. Manuela gathered, then,
that Bolivar believed in the nation, but he did not at this time
believe wholly in the people. He did not believe they were yet
able to rale themselves. He disliked the politicians who appealed
to them; lie hated the pettiness, the mesquinerie, the idiocy of
those who pushed the doctrines of "regionalism" by appealing to
the prejudices of the masses:

50 The Four Seasons of Manuela

The individual fights against the mass; the mass fights against
authority. ... In every government there must be a neutral
body, which stands apart from the attack and disarms the attacker.

What form should the new government take? In view of the
fact that the mass of people had not yet learned to govern them-
selves, what machinery should rule them? First, a president
elected for life; this would give the government time, without the
repeated crises of elections, to train the people in the elements of
democracy. Then, following the English system, Bolivar would
have a hereditary senate, corresponding to the House of Lords.
He did not think in terms of a new nobility, but lie wanted to de-
velop a new American patriciate, a senate composed of people
grown used to power and its traditions, those who were above the
commercial battle and could thus use all their prestige for the
public good. The lower house would be popularly elected, and
would freely express the popular will. The ideal government must
be strong; there must be discipline; the leadership must spring
from the intellectual and moral elite. If not, there would be
anarchy on which the petty politicians would feed; this would
bring disunion, and Spain would again return to power: "Not the
Spaniards but our own disunity shall lead us back into slavery."

Yet was it not chimerical to think at this time of unifying the
whole continent and making it a nation with a single purpose?
After all and even Manuela knew this the continent was in
chaos; no one thought of it in such terms as these. To the south,
Argentina was free, but chaotic; and the Indian state of Paraguay
that bordered her was locked behind a green curtain of jungle.
Chile, which had been liberated from Spain in 1817, had already
fallen into just the sort of anarchy that Bolivar had described as
a result of disunity.

And Peru! Only the capital city of Lima and a small section of
the coast were in patriot hands. In the hinterland, in the Andes,
was a huge royalist army, moving at will throughout the moun-
tains; it threatened at any moment to sweep down upon Lima.
Peru was hostile to the Republic, because freedom had been im-

Triumplis of a Hetaira 51

posed upon it from without. Now few Limenos supported it, and
only a very few had really participated in the earlier phases of the
revolution. Lima set the pattern for the country, and Lima was the
metropolis of the aristocratic classes; three centuries of colonialism
had effaced Peru's will for independence. Precisely. Well this,
then, this was the mission of Gran Colombia.

Simon Bolivar went up to a huge wall map. There, across the
top of South America was Gran Colombia; on its Atlantic side
stood Venezuela, sprawling with extended borders to Brazil; fac-
ing the Caribbean Sea was Colombia, which had as its citizens
the best legal minds in South America (it had forged the Re-
public following Bolivar's concept); to the north was Panama, the
entrepot of the Pacific; and to the south, completing the four-state
union of Gran Colombia and holding the key to the continent,
was Ecuador. Even though the Republic was rent here and there
by local squabbles, it exhibited what political unity could do.
Gran Colombia must be the sun around which the lesser South
American planets revolved. Even now, before actuality betrayed
the dream. Bolivar was sending an envoy to Mexico and an
ambassador to Peru to win them to the idea of continental soli-
darity; and in the realm of the practical lie had hired Swedish
engineers to survey the Isthmus and report on the possibilities of
cutting a Panama canal. Of course, he admitted, ofttiines he did
the necessary things with great expedition, and inquired after-
wards as to their legality. Furthermore lie had to concede that
there were not too many politicians in Gran Colombia who be-
lieved in this grandiose conception. Yet he would press for ful-
filment, he would pursue his ideal just as Don Quixote battled
with windmills in the pursuit of his. Still there were many prob-
lems which had to be solved; and one of them was immediate and
pressing.

Manuela well knew what it was, the large map hanging on the
General's wall explained it graphically; it was the southern frontier
of Gran Colombia, it was Ecuador. The country's Andean sections
were already linked to the Republic; to the east lay the vast track-

52 The Four Seasons of Manuela

less Amazon; to the south was Peru; and on the fringe of the tropi-
cal Pacific coast was the city of Guayaquil. It was a squalid port,
its houses of split bamboo raised on stilts lining streets that were
quagmires. Three centuries of ravage by termites and pirates had
left it with the formless character of a tropical abattoir; it was a
notable pesthole unsightly, unsanitary, dangerous. But it was
built some distance from the Pacific on the edge of a deep river,
formed by a skein of smaller streams. Ships were built there;
lumbering was a sizable trade; chocolate, cotton, and rubber
poured through it. Guayaquil was not only the port that handled
all the country's commerce; it was the only good port within a
thousand miles. Whoever controlled it, controlled the whole of
Ecuador, Bolivar knew its importance, to Ecuador and to the
whole of Gran Colombia; he was determined to have it: "I have
not had time for anything, for I have been meditating how to ac-
quire GuayaquiFs adhesion to us; to win Guayaquil and yet to
preserve harmony with Peru."

Yet to preserve harmony with Peru! that was the heart of the
problem. General San Martin, victor of Lima and its Protector,
held the reins of power there and he too was pledged to his gov-
ernment to gain Guayaquil. San Martin must not be alienated, nor
his prestige lowered; that would weaken Peru, and cause it to
collapse into the arms of the royalists, who even now were hover-
ing outside Lima with a force of ten thousand soldiers. He had
better confer with General San Martin. Such a meeting was long
overdue between the two leaders, and San Martin too looked anx-
iously forward to it:

I shall meet the Liberator of Colombia. The common interests
of Peru and Colombia, the effective conclusion of the war we are
waging, and the stability of the political form toward which
America is rapidly approaching make our meeting necessary.

Manuela's chance was here, and she knew it. These two great
men had never met. And about San Martin, Don Sim6n showed an
obvious uneasiness. He disliked entering into any action without
first having exhaustive intelligence of the matter in hand, the

Triumphs of a Hetaira 53

strengths and weaknesses of Ms adversary. And he had no informa-
tion on recent developments in Peru, or on the Protector himself.
In fact there was only one person in Quito who did, and that was
herself, Manuela.

It was scarcely six weeks since she had left Lima, where for
five years she had known everyone who was anyone: royalists,
patriots, priests, foreigners, fools, soldiers and even trulls. Her
relations had cut through all the divisions of Lima's society. Her
slaves had brought her the scuttlebutt of the people, from the wine
shops and picanterias; she had picked up rumors, hints, plans, sug-
gestions from midnight tertulias in the houses of people of quality;
she had items of intelligence from the sea captains who frequented
her husband's table. Nothing of import happened in Lima without
her learning of it sooner or later. Besides, she had a wonderful
faculty of being able to evaluate friends or enemies, and with a
few strokes of pointed language she could sketch the character of
men. She knew intimately the people with whom one had to deal
in these delicate matters: the titled and reactionary aristocrats of
Lima; the confused patriot Marquis de Torre Tagle; the volatile
and sensitive Jose de la Riva Agiiero, who already was tearing
apart the fabric of the newly woven Republic of Peru; Bernardo
Monteagudo, the intellectual force of the revolution. And she
knew this was most important General Jose de San Martin;
in fact Rosita Campusano, his mistress, was one of her intimates.
Yes Manuela, reclining on a high-backed couch in the pose
made famous by Madame Recanaier, would be happy to place all
her knowledge at Bolivar's disposal.

A new Manuela was emerging, and Bolivar was quick to note
it. Here was a creature who was more than a desirable woman; she
had many facets to her and here was one which could be put to
fundamental use. Manuela was well aware of this too. She realized
that love in itself was not enough for Bolivar. That was what the
long course of his casual loves had given him, and one by one
he had moved out of their lives forever. To hold him, some depth
must be given to the relationship, some third dimension added.

54 The Four Seasons of Manuela

Manuela would bind Simon Bolivar to her by the bonds of shared
creation.

And now of San Martin: let there be enough of him to explain
his reputation. Well in his essence San Martin was a soldier; a
functional soldier without heroics, and what was in these times
almost an enigma a man without personal ambition. He was tall,
erect and reserved, a handsome man with a large aquiline nose
and sweeping side whiskers; his military knowledge and leader-
ship were outstanding.

San Martin, like Bolivar, was American born in the little
village of Yapeyu in Argentina. Schooled at the Seminary for Aris-
tocrats in Spain and enrolled in a Spanish regiment when his age
allowed, he fought with distinction in the Peninsular Wars against
Napoleon's invasion. At twenty-two he was a full colonel and a
member of the Spanish commander's staff, but when the revolu-
tion broke out in Argentina he resigned his command and offered
his services to his native land.

Arriving in Argentina in 1812, San Martin organized a corps o
mounted grenadiers, molded a tough fighting army around them,
and embarked on one of the boldest campaigns in military history.
He knew, as did Simon Bolivar, that the center of Spanish resist-
ance would be in Peru; and he resolved to attack Peru from the
south. The heaven-scraping, snow-filled Andes barred the way,
and the narrow length of Chile; but he inarched forward. He
crossed the Andes in twenty horrendous days, fell on the godos
in the rear, and made himself master of Chile. Then he slowly
moved on Lima. The patriot fleet, several ships of the line com-
manded by the British sailor of fortune, Lord Cochrane, controlled
the seas. Within the city the patriot underground was effectively
sowing disunion and undermining the defenses, and the Spanish
had no stomach for battle. On June 26, 1821, they abandoned
Lima without a fight, and retreated to the Andes to build up their
army anew, while San Martin entered the gates of the walled city.
But once Lima and the adjoining coast were in patriot hands, a
strange lethargy seemed to settle on San Martin. His activities be-

Triumphs of a Hetaira 55

came political rather than military. He was made Protector of
Peru, with Bernardo Monteagudo as Minister of State; a congress
was selected; a new democratic nobility, the Order of the Sun,
was created. He even attempted to reorganize the financial struc-
ture. Yet the lethargy persisted. It was said he was ill, weakened
by the privations of the past five years. He was racked with
rheumatism, he had sharp pains in his stomach ( Manuela had this
from Rosita Campusano, who saw more of him than anyone else),
and he was compelled to take opium in small doses to ease the
hurt. Already he was abusing this malevolent anodyne beyond the
danger point.

Yet whatever the cause, military inaction was feeding the flames
of discord. The godos marched back and forth along the coast,
almost at will; Admiral Cochrane "his metallic Lordship" had
deserted the cause in an argument over prize money; behind the
walls of Lima spies and agents provocateurs were undermining the
Republic. There were defeats in the field, plots and revolts within
the city walls, betrayal and perfidy everywhere. For this chaotic
situation, Bernardo Monteagudo as Secretary of State had a single
panacea the terror. Royalist sympathizers were hanged, many
were sent into exile, chattels were confiscated right and left. The
terror cut down through all ages and all sentiments; even ardent
patriots quaked before this revolution. The patriotic movement
had begun to disintegrate, and high-ranking officers were talking
openly of a rival republic. To make matters worse, an epidemic of
yellow fever had swept the city. San Martin now realized that
without Bolivar he could not raise an army of sufficient strength
to fight the Spaniards; thus he would be coming to Ecuador with
a poor bargaining position.

All this was precisely what Bolivar needed to know. There was
now no uncertainty about Guayaquil; he was ready to make his
decision: "These are the days to take advantage of charm and sur-
prise ... so I propose to enter Guayaquil at the head of the
allied armies/*

As always with Bolivar the action swiftly followed the thought.

56 The Four Seasons of Manuela

He perfected his plans, called his staff together, and gave the
orders: "March to Guayaquil and arrange that I enter as its
Liberator." Then he himself made ready to leave on the morning
of July 4thu His twelfth night in Quito had come to an end.

Bolivar doubtless believed that he was riding out of Manuela's
life, as he had ridden out of the life of many a woman, and that
there would be no emotional complications here. He had already
felt Manuela's strength felt in her passion something which
would swallow him whole if he allowed it; felt the force of her
mind which could, if not guarded against, assume lasting im-
portance in his councils. He did not want this to happen. The
expedition to the coast, to Guayaquil, could not have come at a
more propitious moment. He had found a good excuse to escape
Manuela.

As he mounted to go down the same path that had brought
Manuela to this heaven-bound city, she knew, as she watched him,
his great fear of permanence. Even men as astute as Bolivar be-
lieved that women made no choices of their own; that they merely
echoed the choices men had first selected.

At this thought a remembered smile crossed Manuela's face, a
strange, enigmatic smile which held both challenge and promise.
It would have frightened Bolivar half to death had he seen it

THE PRICE OF GAINING

IN THE MONTHS THAT FOLLOWED there were no letters from Bolivar.
It upset Manuela, and angered her, for she had wrung a promise
from him that he would write, no matter how complicated his
movements. It would have been, of course, immeasurably reassur-
ing to have had letters from him. Like most women, she was not
fully satisfied with protestations of love; she needed the sense of
permanence that came with the written word. But like all promises
given under duress there is coercion in passion this was only a
half promise; and Bolivar did not keep it.

Yet if there was no direct word from Bolivar, there was no
lack of detail about what was occurring down in the hot lands of
Guayaquil. All sorts of rumors boiled up from the cauldron of the
tropic port; every newly arrived traveler to Quito brought his own
version of the events. On one point all seemed agreed. Bolivar
arrived at the port without incident, rode into the city as Libera-
tor, and led his troops in a victory march through the mud-filled
streets. Before this show of force the agents of Peru, who had
hoped to win the city for their side before his influence could be
felt, fled the political field, leaving it to Bolivar. He had used
"charm and surprise," as he said he would, to win the leaders of
Guayaquil. The city and its provinces were nailed to the jack staff
of the Republic; Guayaquil was part of Gran Colombia.

Everything was in readiness when the schooner Macedonia,
coming up from Peru with General San Martin, dropped anchor in
front of the city's mudbanks t The gonfalons of Gran Colombia

58 The Four Seasons of Manuela

flew beside the red and white banners of Peru, triumphant arch-
ways of palm leaves festooned the streets, people in festive clothes
lined the waterfront to witness the historic meeting, a band stood
ready with polished brass instruments to strike up a patriotic air.
The whole performance waited only for the cue from Its supreme
director.

BoKvar ? jackbooted, spurred, and accoutered in dress uniform,
waited on the landing, surrounded by his gold-braided officers.
The General from Peru stepped ashore. He had expected that one
of the topics of their conversations would be the future of the
province of Guayaquil, and he came fully armed with a dossier of
suggestions. Instead of which . . .

Instead of which General Bolivar met him with an ingratiating
smile, signaled the band to begin Its playing and the claque its
cheering, and above the vivas and the music he spoke:

"Welcome, my General, to the soil of Gran Colombia."

No one could fully agree on what had happened after that meet-
ing. Manuela was fortunate enough to have an official source of
Information her half brother, Captain Jose Maria Saenz. He
was the same age as Manuela and looked like her, he had the
same alabaster complexion, the same brown eyes, dark and lively;
he reflected her spirit, her loyalty, and the unequivocal openness
of manner. Alone of his sisters and brothers, Jose Maria adored
Manuela. Her loyalties were now his loyalties, for only he of the
legitimate Saenz family was a fervent patriot. Manuela had con-
verted him to the revolutionary cause when they were both in
Lima; he had fought for the liberation of Quito; he now held a
command of trust in his native city. In a world alive with rumors,
Jose Maria allowed nothing to impose itself on his credulity.
Through his hands passed the official statements; and these facts,
few as they were, he passed on to Manuela.

It seemed that after the official reception and formal dinner,
the two generals retired alone to a guarded room. Manuela, who
knew both of them intimately, realized the basic opposition of
these two distinct characters, who were created to fill different

The Price of Gaining 59

niches In the political puzzle. San Martin, Manuela knew, was
formal, correct, and austere, with a soldier's rigidity and a high
sense of honor and purpose. Bolivar her Simon was gay and
light, with a disarming charm which disguised his Machiavellian
maneuvers. He could play out the human comedy with periods of
humor; but he was, and none knew It better than she, devious in
his campaigns to triumph where triumph he must.

In their political concepts of America, the two had no common
meeting ground. San Martin's collision with the problem of de-
mocracy in Peru where three quarters of the people were illiter-
atehad reversed his earlier feeling for a strictly democratic
government. He now sincerely believed that an interim form of
monarchy was the only solution; and he was, as he admitted, in
actual contact with a princely house in Germany, to seek a candi-
date for the throne of Peru. Bolivar abhorred the Idea of kingship,
and although he concurred with San Martin on the unreadiness for
democracy of the bulk of the people, he still believed in a society
of free American nations, to be governed at first by a lifetime presi-
dent on the model of Gran Colombia, with a gradual extending
of the democratic base. Their fundamental political disagreement
was established quickly; San Martin then turned to the immediate
military picture in Peru.

It was terrifying enough. The royalist army was constantly
growing larger, while the patriot force was shrinking by deser-
tions. Battle must soon be offered, yet Peru had not the necessary
troops. San Martin pointedly suggested that Bolivar send forces
to Peru for its liberation, just as he had sent a brigade to Bolivar
to aid in the freeing of Quito. But Bolivar did not wish to be drawn
into a political maelstrom. He offered the precise number of troops
one thousand and sixty-two soldiers that had been sent to him
from Peru, although it was obvious to them both that the whole
Colombian army was needed. Again San Martin was stalemated.
He then made offer to serve tinder Bolivar if he could lead his
army into Peru. It was a generous and humbling gesture. Bolivar
would not hear of it He refused it> as Manuela well knew, be-

60 The Four Seasons of Manueh

cause lie had no power to accept it; he had yet to be given au-
thority to leave the domain of the Republic. But there was still
another reason. Peru lacked unity, it was divided, and Bolivar
was afraid of it:

I do not wish to go to Peru if glory does not follow me. ... I
do not wish to lose the fruits of eleven years of war through one
defeat, and I do not wish San Martin to see me other than as I
deserve to be seen; namely, as the chosen son.

It was an ineffectual, disappointing first meeting. General San
Martin retired to his delegation and worked late into the night on
new proposals, while Bolivar danced. The next day they met
again. As at the first meeting, no one else was present, no one
took notes. San Martin, away from Bolivar's dominating personal-
ity, had marshaled his arguments, and now presented a series of
demands that sounded almost like an ultimatum. Bolivar did not
bother to give them rebuttal; he reached into his military tunic
and pulled out a letter just received from his ambassador in Peru.
There had been a palace revolution in Lima. The day after the
General had left for the Guayaquil meeting, the other members
of the government had seized his Minister, the hated little dandy
Bernardo Monteagudo, thrown him on a vessel bound for Panama,
and installed a provisional government. San Martin was clearly
in no political position to insist on any conditions. It was a terrible
moment for this man, who had given so much of his life to the
wars for independence only to be disowned as soon as his back
was turned. Silently he emerged from the conference room, si-
lently he embraced Bolivar; and with lowered head he walked in
sorrow from the house.

That night there was a grand ball in their joint honor, with the
usual flood of gold lace and bold decolletage, the flow of wine,
and a spontaneous, vibrant gaiety. Only whispered rumors moved
about the grand hall, for no one else knew what had taken place
in the conference room. Bolivar and San Martin gave no hint o
it, yet those who observed them could guess by their attitudes

The Price of Gaining 61

who had won. Bolivar was gay and careless; lie danced with aban-
don to a waltz newly arrived from Europe, and between dances
triied with the three Garaycoa sisters. General San Martin was
taciturn almost to the point of rudeness; he danced several times,
stiff and wooden, trying heroically through the evening to hide
the bitterness that was consuming him. At last he could stand it
no more; he quickly gathered up his cape and his patent-leather
bicomed hat, kissed the hand of his hostess, and slid out unobtru-
sively into the darkness.

But General Bolivar saw him leave, and abruptly abandoned his
charming lady of the moment to follow San Martin out into the
night They met on the pier at the edge of the river, and they
talked long and quietly there. Each admired the other's greatness,
yet they had now reached an impasse and since genius is ego-
centric someone had to yield. It was to be San Martin. He had
been in Guayaquil only thirty-six hours, and in that short space
of time all that he had worked for through these past years had
crumpled like a pricked balloon. He was going back to Peru to re-
sign from his office; he would eclipse himself at the height of his
glory; and he would leave the field the entire stage of South
America to his rival. They silently embraced. Bolivar stepped
back to salute him, but San Martin stayed his arm and quietly
said: "I have finished my public life. ... I shall go to France and
live out the days of my life in retirement. Only time and events
will say which of us has seen the future with more clarity."

Manuela knew that Simon Bolivar had won. Guayaquil and the
whole tropical province had been gathered into the Republic of
Gran Colombia; its frontiers now ran from the Atlantic to the
Caribbean, and from that stormy sea to the Pacific and the bleak
coasts of Peru. Bolivar had won, but she knew too that winning
sometimes consists in losing, for he had brought about precisely
what he had wanted to avoid. He had lowered the prestige of San
Martin, weakened Peru, and brought it closer than ever to the
devouring maw of the royalists* forces.

If corroboration was needed, it was not long in coming. Mann-

62 The Four Seasons of Manuela

ela had a weeping letter from Roslta Campusano which, in purely
personal terms, told almost everything. San Martin had returned,
resigned his offices, and departed for Europe leaving her, once
the first lady of Lima, in obscurity. Everything was chaotic in
Peru. An issue of paper money had depressed the currency, and
prices were astronomical. Those who could, fled with their silver
plate; there were no luxuries for those who stayed. And the Hood-
thirsty godos were making raids right up to the walls of Lima,
pillaging, burning, killing everyone who had shown republican
sympathies. The government, which was really a wrangling coun-
cil, could agree on nothing; the armies they raised to defeat the
royalists were decimated before they even reached the battlefield;
the Argentine contingent of the Peruvian army had melted away;
and unpaid soldiers were ravaging the farms of the coast. The
Colombian troops sent down by General Bolivar had been re-
ceived with open hostility, so that their officers had quickly em-
barked the men and sent them back to Guayaquil. So it went. And
all the while the royalist army hovered over the walled city, wait-
ing like a carrion bird until the city's lif eblood ran out from the
self-inflicted wounds of anarchy. And of course the scandal of
Manuela and her affair with Bolivar was all over Lima. . . .

But Rosita did not have to tell her that; there were letters from
her husband. The Macedonia had carried back to Peru more than
a disillusioned General San Martin.

The impact of the love affair must have been horrible to James
Thome; there had always been gossip about Manuela, and he was
a jealous man. Love affairs were viewed with tolerant amusement
in Lima, but not by Thorne. He was English, and he was pre-
occupied with the form as well as the substance of marriage; lie
had made a morality out of his incompetence. The shock of hav-
ing been made a cuckold wounded his self-esteem, and put him at
a disadvantage in business. Besides, he was terribly in love with.
Manuela. Still Thorne had learned something during his five years
of marriage. He did not threaten or cajole her, he did not insist
on his rights. Instead he hung his arguments on the theme of

The Price of Gaining 63

honor. Divorce was impossible. There was no way in which she
could bring about a permanent relationship. Even time would not
give sanction to the affair, so affair it could only be. The honorable
thing, the wise thing, would be to bring it to an end.

Manuela's reaction was immediate and unequivocal; No.

On November 16, more than four months after he had left it,
Simon Bolivar rode back unannounced into Quito. It was those
passion-swept June days all over again. During the mornings and
afternoons there were conferences with his officers, visits to the
wounded, petitions of soldiers to be answered, letters to write. The
comings and going of couriers at all hours filled the little white
stone city of Quito with the sharp tattoo of horses clanking over
cobblestone streets.

Then at night it was Manuela. But it was not quite as it had
been before. She had stormed and raved over his neglect of her,
and over his casual affairs with other women during their separa-
tion. They filled her with anger and disgust. She was, Bolivar soon
found, not a woman to be trifled with; when aroused she had the
temper of a tigress. But their violent quarrels were short-lived,
and the reconciliations were delicious. Once the anger of Manuela
was transmuted and her fierceness quelled and rechanneled into
love, the moment of violence passed, and tenderness entwined
them.

Manuela's personal affairs were now pressing heavily on her.
She had no wish to burden Simon Bolivar with one more individ-
ual problem, but her affairs were complicated. It was the Aispuius
again. They had somehow discovered another legal delay to keep
her from her inheritance; she was just as far away from its posses-
sion as she had been five years before. The estate was hers by law,
by every moral right; and to have these people standing in the way
with their tricks and lawyers* quibbles she was determined to
beat them at all costs. Besides, at this moment, when the security
which marriage had given her seemed about to be eclipsed, the
modicum of security her estate would yield would be helpful.

When Manuela^ thoughts were these, she forgot all else; the

64 The Four Seasons of Manuela

war, the soldiers, her husband, her lover. The possession of her in-
heritance became an obsession. Bolivar felt its urgency for her; he
promised that he would personally intervene with the courts to
get the matter settled, and so began the needed steps; but when
one is living in a revolution, life is fraught with uncertainties. Be-
fore anything decisive could be done, a counterrevolution in a far
comer of Ecuador blew up right in his face.

"Ah, these days/* Bolivar sighed, "they have left me completely
fatigued. . . . The insurrection at Pasto has alarmed all the pa-
triots here in Quito."

The nerves of the people had been fretted. The chaos in Lima,
the discontent in Colombia, and the insurrection here in recently
liberated Ecuador alarmed everyone. Bolivar acted with alacrity.
He sent young General Sucre ahead with a flying column of lancers
to quell the uprising, while he followed with the foot troops. It
was a long ride, five hundred miles across the dreaded snow-swept
plateau of the Andes. Bolivar did not relish it. But go he must,
to win back the province with honeyed words, or if need be with
blood and iron. So suddenly, and without a moment of farewell
to Manuela, he was gone.

It was only days later, after Sucre had put down the rebellion
and he had reached the wretched little mountain village of Yucan-
quer, that Bolivar remembered Manuela. He had forgotten his
promise to her. In a small, cold, grass-thatched mud hut, bored
beyond measure, without a fire or friends or his Manuela, he sat
down by the light of a candle and wrote his first letter to her. He
apologized for not being able to fulfill his promise, told her of the
victory here at Yucanquer, and dilated on his boredom. "What
do we do here? We conjugate the verb ennuyer . . ?

Manuela answered his letter on December 28; her reply carried
in it some of the penetrating cold of the high Andes:

Sm:

In your much appreciated letter, dated December 23, you have
shown me the interest you have taken in my affairs. I give you
thanks for all this, although you deserve more than mere grati-

The Price of Gaining 65

tade, for you have been so very considerate toward me in my
present position. If you had only been nearer when this happened.
What will it serve now, that you are sixty leagues from here? The
victory at Yucanquer has cost me dearly. Now you will tell me
that I am not a patriot for saying what I am going to say: "I would
much rather that I had won [the victory over the Aispurus] than
that you had gained ten victories at Pasto,"

I know the boredom you must suffer in that town; but no mat-
ter how desperate you find yourself, it is not as bad for you as for
the most fervent of your friends, who is

MANUELA

The bells of Quito were tolling the New Year of 1823 when
Simon Bolivar, tired and worn, walked his horse into the city.
Manuela did not wait this time for his message: "Come to me.
Come, Come now." She was already there, waiting on the steps.
Bolivar was completely exhausted; and that fact was amazing in
itself, for he was thought to be tireless. In earlier years he could
ride three thousand miles through the jungles and plains, and
arrive at the journey's end as fresh as when he began; his soldiers
called him Old Iron-Ass. His personal physician, Dr. Charles
Moore of the British Legion, suggested rest as the best possible
remedy. But how could lie rest? And Bolivar heaped on Dr. Moore
("a good man but triflingly timid") all the irritations of his impa-
tience. However, Manuela took charge; she saw that the doctor's
orders were followed, and herself assumed the duties of his con-
fidential secretary. She decided who would and who would not see
the Liberator, ordered the staff about, and emerged in this mo-
ment of his illness as the dominant person in his circle, part
amazon and part hetaira ^tihe ideal woman/* said Dublin-born
Captain Fergusson, for a fighter such, as Bolivar.

Bolivar did not accept this new arrangement willingly. He hated
the feeling of being swallowed up by a woman, especially by such
a capable, passionate, and determined young woman as Manuela.
He fought against her as much as his illness allowed. Yet she had
her way, and he improved noticeably with Ms days of rest. He was
still convalescent when she brought him a distinguished visitor.

66 The Four Seasons of Manuela

He was a spruce, pock-marked, cat-faced dandy, a sturdily built
man with a fine resonant voice. His leaden complexion, thick lips,
and tightly curled dark hair, clubbed in a cadogan, suggested
Negro blood. He was dressed in the latest Beau Brummel fashion,
with, trousers strapped under polished boots and high-collared
coat of stylish London brown. Diamond studs stayed his cambric
shirt, a diamond ring flashed on his finger, the jeweled watch in his
florid waistcoat carried a golden chain with a gold nugget still
buried in the quartz of its birth. His hands were manicured
like those of a duchess, and the scent of eau de cologne was
heavy about him. Yet there was more about him than, this: he
was the intellectual force of the revolution, and his name
was Bernardo Monteagudo. He had come to claim Bolivar's
protection.

So this was the man whose applied revolutionary metaphysics
had brought down the house of General San Martin; Bolivar could
feel his charm. His mind had the knife-sharpness of a guillotine,
and he expressed himself eloquently and persuasively. As the great
formulator of revolutionary thought the Tom Paine of South
America, so to speak he was a man of importance, and his plea
for protection demanded the most careful consideration. He was
another of those whom Manuela had known so well in Lima. She
would supply information about him his personality, his back-
ground, his political career when it was needed.

Monteagudo was a patriot, an Argentinian; he had been San
Martin's man since the beginning. As a university student he had
become involved in the Lautaro Masonic lodge, a hotbed of revolt;
had been sentenced to death, pardoned, and exiled. Throwing in
his lot with San Martin, he had returned to Argentina in 1812,
written the manifestos, raised the troops, organized the civilian
revolutionaries and emerged the most important man in the
movement, after its field commander. When Lima was occupied,
he became the power in Peru; and he used that power ruthlessly
in the carrying out of his ideals.

Everything Spanish was anathema to him; and he was always

The Price of Gaining 67

in a tuny. To bring the new order to birth and he, like Bolivar,
thought in terms of an entire continent freed and reorganized
everything old must go. There must be a new organization of so-
ciety, a new economy, new political forms; new names for the
cities, the streets, and buildings; even new calendars and new
emotions; morals too must change, echoing the extremes of the
French Revolution. And all who opposed these reforms must be
eliminated.

Obsessed with power, he executed his plans without scruple.
He confiscated estates, banished many hundreds of well-liked
royalists, sent even more to the gallows including some who
were undoubted patriots, but of a different stamp from this charm-
ing mulatto. His utter indifference to personalities and past serv-
ices brought inevitable discord. He created a host of enemies, and
soon they were actively plotting against him. Only his high office
as Minister of State in San Martins government saved him from
assassinations; and his reply to such plots, as to all opposition, was
an ever greater application of the terror. Soon all the factions in
Lima, differing in all else, agreed on one single fact their uncom-
promising hatred of Monteagudo.

When San Martin sailed for Guayaquil their chance came. They
seized him, trussed him up like cotton in a bale, and bundled
him onto a ship for Panama; he was proscribed and he would be
executed if he should ever set foot in Peru again.

Now here he was in Quito. His future presented a serious prob-
lem, and so Manuela, while she liked him personally and had felt
the influence of many of his ideas, still was against making him a
political ally. She knew the people of Lima would resent it bit-
terly; they would feel that, in protecting Monteagudo, Bolivar was
setting himself up against them. It would be political imprudence
of the worst sort. But Bolivar was not convinced by her arguments.
He was desperate for men of Monteagudo's intellectual capacity.
He had field commanders, ambassadors, precise legal minds to
draft laws and constitutions, all these in abundance. But men of
vision, men who could see America in broad terms, men who

68 The Four Seasons of Manuela

thought as he did of a united continent of them, there were
hardly any. Monteagudo was such a man.

Besides, Monteagudo agreed that something must be done
about Peru. The country would inevitably be reconquered by roy-
alist arms unless help was despatched promptly. There was only
one way to save Peru, and at the same time implement Bolivar's
vision of a united South America. That was for him personally to
lead Ms army south, and defeat the godos in a last great battle.
The whole plan was filled with jeopardy yet he would have to take
the risk. And he would have to find an excuse for immediate
action.

The excuse was not long in appearing. A delegation from Peru
arrived in Quito bearing urgent messages from the junta. Their
strength was fast ebbing, the Spaniards were pressing ever closer,
the situation was desperate for Peru, and for the entire continent.
Would the Republic of Gran Colombia, would Simon Bolivar him-
self, intervene in their war and save their independence? Here
was the opportunity he had wanted, the end to all uncertainty. He
took his pen, and to its leaders he wrote: "I have decided to save
your country from the tyrants/*

Throughout the spring and the summer of 1823 men and mate-
rial poured down to Guayaquil, the port of embarkation. The city
swarmed with royalist spies, yet no attempt was made to hide the
operation. Bolivar was preparing his army for service in Peru.
Here were lancers from Venezuela in their jaguar-skin shakos,
hard-riding llaneros who rode their horses into battle barefoot,
and who could live on strips of sun-dried beef and fight in all cli-
mates. There were grenadiers from Colombia, seasoned troops
efficient in mass attack; and the British Legion's "Rifles Regiment, 5 *
sprinkled with Scots, English, German, Russian and Irish veterans
of Waterloo. There were Ecuadorian regiments, newly uniformed
in green homespuns piped with red, who had been hardened by
the Andean campaigns. All of these, the flower of the allied armies,
came down in a steady stream to the port of Guayaquil. Transpor-
tation problems were enormous. The patriot fleet was small, but it

The Price of Gaining 69

was being increased by the daring attacks of two English condot-
tiere sea captains, Illingsworth and Wright. They raided the seas
for Spanish ships, disposed of the crews by cheerfully dumping
them into the placid Pacific or hanging them at the yardarms, and
added their prizes to the allied fleet. Yes, inexorably each problem
was being resolved. General Sucre was chosen as field commander
of the armies, to precede Bolivar to Peru with the main body of the
troops. Food, uniforms, munitions were arriving daily; everything
was abundant. Everything except one thing money.

Simon Bolivar had little concept of high finance. His family
had once been the richest in all South America, he had been reared
as a gentleman.* money had always been available. Now, even
though the wars had consumed almost all of his inheritance, he
still lived as he had been taught to live, with no thought to ex-
pense. He was generous to excess, giving away most of his presi-
dential salary as pensions to war widows or gifts to wounded
veterans, spending the rest for purposes of state. Most of the
financing for the war had to come from Colombia, which was
impoverished by years of struggle. With its entire commerce
dislocated, its famous haciendas ruined by the holocaust of battle,
the Republic found it a fearful financial burden. Yet it was from
Bogota that Bolivar demanded funds for the continuation of the
war. Money, money, money: these were the three elements of final
victory.

"And speaking of money/* wrote his Vice-President in answer
to one of Bolivar's petulant requests for additional funds, "today
there is not a centavo in the Treasury. The budget of this govern-
ment alone consumes 1500 to 2000 pesos daily. You need money
urgently. What do we do now, my general?'*

Francisco de Paula Santander, the Vice-President of Gran Co-
lombia, had been writing to Bolivar more and more in this vein.
He was clearly irritated by the demands put upon him, and he
did not like what he called the "Peruvian adventure/* Even now,
in the midst of final preparations for the campaign, he kept urging
Bolivar to return to Colombia. The country needed the unifying

70 The Four Seasons of Manuela

effect of Ms presence. To all such, requests Bolivar remained
adamant:

But realize this ... I now belong not only to the Colombians
* . . nor do I belong to Caracas. I belong to the whole nation;
besides there is still the royalist army, which wants to conquer
Peru.

In the end Bolivar's arguments prevailed; funds did arrive from
Colombia. But there were still delays that affected the whole
campaign. Dispatches sent him from the Congress in Bogota
seemed over-long in coming, even allowing for the six weeks it
ordinarily took a messenger to ride the thousand intervening miles
of Andean upland, precipitous river valley, and tropical Jungle. He
needed news, reports, copies of the latest decrees; and they came
too slowly. He needed an "Enabling Act" to permit him to leave
the territory of Gran Colombia and lead the expedition to Peru;
it did not come at all. Gradually it dawned on Bolivar that all this
delay was no mere accident; it was made by a man, not a god, and
that man was Santander.

He knew Santander well very well. He could remember the
day, years before, when Santander had been one of his military
officers and they were battling the godos. He had ordered an at-
tack; the other had refused to obey until Bolivar, turning on him
with drawn pistol, had shouted, "You will give the order to charge;
otherwise you will shoot me, for I will most certainly shoot you."

Yet Santander had been brave enough on other occasions, and
he actually enjoyed the sight of bloodletting. He always attended
executions, relished the sight of a body squirming at the end of a
rope, and made formal appointments with captured royalist agents
to "celebrate our meeting in the public square/*

Perhaps his mixed heritage had something to do with, this, for
in his veins he had the blood of the conquistador Diego de Col-
menares which mingled with that of an Indian cacique's daughter.
He was a real American. He had done great work in the civil
sphere, organizing the Republic, drafting its Constitution, con-

The Price of Gaining 71

solidating the victory, administering the thousand and one details
of the nation's financial and legal management. Yet he had no
grasp whatever of Bolivar's continental visions; his own horizon
was limited by the skyline of Gran Colombia, he was not adven-
turous, and he thoroughly disliked Bolivar's form of personalized
government. He was a perfect bureaucrat, dominating and imperi-
ous "a man of laws," as Bolivar contemptuously described him
to Manuela.

While he fulfilled the presidential functions in Bolivar's ab-
sence from the capital, he became enamored of power. Now he
was trying to contain Bolivar in the orbit of the Republic, and
this when anyone but a clodpoll could see that Gran Colombia
had no safety as long as a huge enemy army stood undefeated on
its borders. As it was, Santander already gave signs of emerging as
a serious rival for Bolivar's authority.

Manuela did not know Santander, except as Bolivar had de-
scribed him to her, and as he was pictured in those posters and
broadsides which, printed on Quito's one press, were already
bringing to the whole country the portraits of the heroes of the
revolution. These portraits, steel engravings for the most part,
showed the Vice-President as a handsome man of good bearing,
whose dark, slightly slanted eyes suggested his Indian blood.
Black hair accentuated the pallor of his skin, giving it an almost
gangrenous look; his expression was one of hauteur. She did not
like that face; it showed a character proficient in the dilatory arts
of negotiation, in scheming, in underhanded trickery. To her,
whose reactions were prompt and profound, it was very simple.
She did not like Santander. She hated him. He was the enemy. He
was Manuela's personal enemy; for he stood in the path of Bolivar's
plans for final victory, and Bolivar's loves were now her loves, his
hates her hates. She began to hate Santander with vehemence; and
since she could never distinguish between a personality and an
argument, and as she had no special gift of reticence, she began
to say cutting things about him in public.

This, of course, got back to Bogota; and it little advanced Boli-

72 The Four Seasons of Manuela

var's cause, for Santander could now point out that the President
flouted the sacred tenets o marriage just as he ignored the Con-
stitution. As for Manuela, he dismissed her contemptuously as
"La Saenz," and asserted that she was little better than a whore.
He could not know it then, but he was clashing, at a thousand
miles 5 * distance, with one of the Furies.

Time had spun out to August of 1823. The transports had been
sailing south to Peru throughout all the season. General Sucre with
an army of five thousand troops was now in Lima. The dispatches
coming up from him were full of foreboding; the royalists were on
the march, and they had no intention of allowing a fully equipped
allied army to gain further foothold. The chaotic political condi-
tions in Lima made it impossible to carry on military operations.
Without the magic of Bolivar's presence, all would be lost. He
must come to Peru at once.

Bolivar in hectic impotence made another plea to Santander:
"The commandant of the transports said that if I do not go to Peru
it is useless to send another single soldier/*

And still the Enabling Act did not come.

At length he decided to defy the Congress; he would go without
the Enabling Act; he ordered the frigate Chimborazo to prepare to
sail, and instructed his staff and a contingent of hussars to embark.
And there was a final skirmish. It was with Manuela. She expected
to accompany the military transports back to Lima, for she now
felt herself an integral part of Bolivar's official circle. But it was
not to be; Bolivar cherished his freedom too dearly. He had re-
gained his old strength, and Manuela was no match for him. She
remained behind.

Then, just before the Chimborazo lifted anchor, a courier gal-
loped up on a mud-spattered mule with an official dispatch from
the Congress of the Republic. It contained Boliva/s Enabling Act;
he was now legally free to leave the country and to take command
of the allied armies for the liberation of Peru.

As the frigate sailed from Guayaquil on August 8, 1823, Sim6n

The Price of Gaining 73

Bolivar had reason to congratulate himself. He had triumphed
over space, and time, and the titanic difficulties of nature. He had
won over Santander, and the Congress, He was going to Peru on
his own terms. And he had slipped out of the terrifying tentacles
of Manuela. These were all victories, and he could list them with
some of his best-fought battles. He had taken the measure of
everything, he had considered everything, and he had triumphed
over everything.

Everything except a single undefinable element love. He had
not counted on the power of that ambiguous monosyllable.

He still had to contend with Manuela.

Summer

The Years 1823-1827
PART TWO

Lima

6
LIMA, CITY OF CHAOS

was the idol of Lima the moment lie set foot in Pern.
He was its one hope. To the patriots, those who massed along the
tree-shaded highway that ran the seven miles from the Pacific to
the walled city. Bolivar was the savior, the hero who would assure
final victory. To others, who had grown lukewarm toward the
Republic, he was at least the symbol of order, order out of chaos,
He was received like a king. On that sun-splashed day of Septem-
ber 3, 1823, the Lord Mayor of Lima appeared to welcome him
wearing a coat of sanguine red; a salute of twenty-one guns was
fired from the fortress that dominated the port of Callao, and the
sumptuous blue and gold six-wheeled coach of the Viceroy, with
lackeys in powdered perukes and silk knee breeches, was offered
to the Liberator for his triumphant entry. All along the tree-
embowered highway, the green-uniformed soldiers of his Colom-
bian army stood guard, under orders to cheer his coining like a
claque. But there was no need of it. The welcome was spontane-
ous, delirious. The dashing quality of his past victories, the sacri-
fice of his personal fortune, his creative manipulation of human
lives, his passion for America, the lyrical quality of his logic, the
all-encompassing humanity which seemed to exude from him, cap-
tured the imagination of everyone who lined the route.

It was Bolivar's first glimpse of Peru. Since the days of his youth
he had heard about the capital of the most important viceroyalty
of America. It was the center of luxury and culture; its women
were famed for their small feet and enchanting manners and the

78 The Four Seasons of Manuela

men for the opulence of their dress. It was the Paris of South
America.

The land was immense and captured his imagination. For as
soon as his ship had left the jungle-fringed shores of Ecuador and
passed into Peruvian waters, the scene had changed abruptly. It
was as his pilot had said it would be: "When you no longer see any
trees you will be in Peru." The aridity of the land was almost im-
possible to believe. Along the coast it was not only dead for
dead implied having once lived the land was unliving. Without
trees, grass, or even cactus. Back of the coastal desert was the
overwhelming eminence of the Andes, its immense rock walls
veiled in a blue haze, gigantic, overpowering.

Yet the air was chilled; and a cold ocean current prevented the
fall of rain, transforming a thousand miles of coastline into waste-
land. Lima, which lay inland from the sea, seven miles from its
port of Callao, was actually an oasis in the vast Peruvian desert.
The gleaming whiteness of Lima's towers with the Andes as a
backdrop, and the high crescent-shaped walls that encircled them,
could be seen miles away. Between Lima and the sea was the
desert; here was none of the perfume of the tropics, nothing of the
smell of dank earth or the musical swish of palm fronds; it was
savage and waterless.

As Bolivar rode along the three-lane highway under the gos-
samer shadow of trees planted at mathematical distances, his ex-
perienced military eyes took in the strategic problems of the land,
the arena in which he must fight. At the harbor was the gray-
stoned fortress, its walls lashed by the sea; it had never been taken
by storm, and was considered impregnable. Then here was the
highway which could bring troops in a rapid three-hour march to
the walls of Lima. Back of the city, from one of the five fortress-
gateways, a road led up to the interior of the Andes. All around it
was the desert.

As he passed along the highway, crowds left their places at the
roadside and poured in behind the coach, overwhelming him with
humanity. Ahead, the bastions of Lima were crowded with people,

Lima, City of Chaos 79

who draped themselves over the parapets, and thronged beside
the Callao Gate.

This massive portal was the most direct gate to the sea. Over
the entrance were the sculptured arms of Carlos IV, King of Spain,
which five years of siege and countersiege had not yet effaced; to
their left, the escutcheon of the City of Lima, a crowned double
eagle with black outstretched wings, on a blue field with three
golden stars; to their right, the symbol of the Board of Trade.

In front of the gateway stood the guard of honor, soldiers of
the Peruvian Legion uniformed in blue with red facings and top-
heavy bearskin shakos. A saber flashed in the sun, and above the
cheers a bugler sounded the blast that ceremoniously opened the
gates of the city.

Once inside the city walls, Lima took on for Bolivar the air of a
sensuous Seville; Moorish balconies carved in arabesques over-
hung the cobblestone streets, giving it much of the atmosphere
of cities of southern Spain. Lima avenues, quaintly named Street
of the Egg, Street of the Scriveners, Seven Sins, Saber-makers, But-
ton-makers were laid down by exact plan, like a chessboard.
And above the houses of limited horizon rose the turrets, cupolas
and barbicans of the churches, towering over the flat dwellings.
Taller than all the rest rose the spire of Santo Domingo, from
whose pinnacle the bronze figure of Fame blew his trumpet into
Lima's cloudless heavens.

Bolivar instantly noted this was not the Lima described to him
so often by Manuela. The Moloch of war had taken its toll. When
Manuela was first there in 1817, the city was filled with the car-
riages of the nobility, who lived within the richly designed ba-
roque of their chateaux with paneled rooms echoing the hotels of
Chantilly. Now Bolivar saw the great houses fallen into neglect;
the avenues were filled with filth, and the water which ran down
the gutters in the center of the streets was dammed by a concentra-
tion of litter.

There was a shabby gentility about Lima, even though the
people had done their utmost to present its best side to the man

80 The Four Seasons of Manuela

who was to restore order. Still this disorder was understandable.
For the royalists, taking advantage of the confusion caused by
General San Martin's self-imposed exile, had moved on Lima
just before Bolivar sailed to Peru. They forced the defenders to
flee to the fortress at Callao; they took the city, and systematically
looted it. The royalists remained only five days long enough,
however, to hang a few of the patriot leaders they caught within
the city, and to extract a huge sum from the inhabitants. The
venerable Judge Prevost, United States Consul, wrote to John
Quincy Adams:

The rear guard under the Royalist General Canterac left their
encampment in Lima on the night of the 16th of July . . . Except
in the destruction of a few Private Houses ... of Individuals
distinguished by their adherence to the revolution the Spaniards
have deviated from their usual savage mode of Waif are . . . 3Q0 3 -
000 dollars were levied in the first contribution and about 200,000
in value carried away in Merchandise.

The godos had also carried away some lives. A few patriots
were left dangling like fruit from the trees of Lima. One of them
was cut down from the gibbet, and trussed up by the arms to a
cross near the plaza. A lantern was placed above his head to
enable the passers-by to read an inscription: Here dangles Besa-
nilla until the insurgents enter Lima.

When the official receptions were over, Bolivar found himself
the military dictator of Peru. And with that, he stepped down from
the enchanting pedestal of a demigod into the mire of political
confusion.

There were, he reckoned up, four distinct republican armies
in Lima Peruvian, Chilean, Argentinian, Colombian all obey-
ing different commanders and all with different ideas of how the
war should be waged. There were also, in addition to the dictator,
two rival presidents fighting each other. One of these, a ci-devant
marquis, Jose de Torre Tagle, was supposed to answer in the con-
duct of his offices to a non-functioning Congress, while the Con-

Lima, City of Chaos 81

gress answered to no one. Three hundred miles to the north an-
other president held forth; this was the self-assured, sensitive Riva
Agiiero. He had held office legitimately, then had been deposed;
but he refused to be put aside, and had set up a rival republican
government of his own. Now even Bolivar was bewildered. "Peru-
vian affairs have reached a peak of anarchy . . . Only the enemy
is well organized, united, strong, energetic and capable."

He had fallen into just the trap that he wanted to avoid. He
had come to Peru to fight the Spaniards; but now, as "dictator/*
he was enmeshed in a civil war. Each faction was trying to per-
suade him to use his Colombian legions to crush the other. It was
an extremely delicate matter; the success of his mission, of the
war, of his plans and even his glory, depended now on the direc-
tion of his decision. He was soon sick of the whole business, and
within days of his arrival was saying to a friend, "I am already
regretting that I came here."

Bolivar found it difficult to make decisions in the city; he felt
a strange languor he had never felt before. What was this insidi-
ous undermining spell of Lima? Was it the atmosphere? He had to
work with deliberation; lie needed time to think, to plan, to work
out his strategy; he could not do this in the heart of Lima. So he
left the palace of the Viceroys, and retired to what had been their
summer home outside the city walls.

Magdalena, a short distance from the sea, was a delightful little
village, an oasis eight miles west of Lima. It lay in a tree-embow-
ered swale which had been a choice and fashionable summer re-
sort since the early eighteenth century. The viceregal villa was
an informal structure built of sun-dried bricks; it had large open-
grilled windows, and an imposing double stairway that led to the
great entrance doors. In front was a little plaza, deeply shadowed
by huge strangler-fig trees which dropped their pallid aerial roots
all over the fruit-littered earth. About the patio, in back of the
villa, there was a garden, planted with flowering shrubs and time-
twisted olive trees. The rooms were nicely adapted to Bolivar's
purposes, large and spacious rooms papered in a florid and agree-

82 The Four Seasons of Manuela

ably patterned design* The furniture was in the French provincial
style, and the loors were made of sienna-colored tile that echoed
to the high-heeled boots of the staff members. Within days Bolivar
was installed in the villa. Sentries were posted at the doors, hussars
with long sabers that dragged on the ground were stationed
around the square, and a nearby house was preempted as a stable
for the horses of the couriers.

War councils were held daily. An intelligence office was set up;
and the city was scoured for the rumors, the gossip, the tittle-tattle
of informers and chatterers, from which could be sifted out the
pattern of public opinion. Agents provocateurs were sent out to
tempt members of the warring factions to reveal their plans. Much
news, and more speculation, came in; but every piece of informa-
tion seemed to lead Bolivar further into the morass of uncertainty.

Most of his old companions-at-arms moved out to the villa to
give council on his decisions. General Sucre, showing the strain
of political confusion, sat in on all the deliberations; he was best
when he discussed the problems in purely military terms. Young
Cordoba, now a general, who eternally vented his spleen at the
inactivity, gave nothing but silence at the councils; he was in his
element only when he was on the battlefield. It was Jacinto Lara
who advised Bolivar to caution. Tall and formal, with none of the
flamboyance of his fellow officers, Lara was a Venezuelan and a
man of mature years. He was the only one from whom Bolivar
would take any personal criticism; he was in essence Bolivar's con-
science, a balance to the Liberato/s impetuosity.

The Minister of War, Tomas de Heres, insisted that the real
problem was the Spaniards. They had a force of nine thousand
men which was daily being augmented by the deserters from the
patriot forces. The godos were well trained, well equipped; and
they were led by some of Spain's best officers, many of whom
had seen service in the European wars. They controlled the moun-
tains, the heartland of Peru, with eight squadrons of the best
cavalry ever seen in the Americas; the foot soldiers were well fed,
well paid, and well disciplined. Therefore, before the patriots

Lima, City of Chaos 83

could move on them, they must first rebuild their army. The Irish
contingent attached to Bolivar's staff were of the same cast of
thought. Arthur Sandes, who had grown a bristling blond guards-
man's mustache since his elevation to the command of the Rifles,
knew that his men, originally a British legion, had to be reorgan-
ized for a campaign in the Andes. After him, O'Leary, O'Connor
and the good-natured William Fergusson expressed themselves in
turn. But these were military opinions. The problem now was po-
litical. How could Bolivar find the ends of this tangled skein of
Peruvian politics?

And then to complicate matters Manuela arrived.

Bolivar had almost forgotten Manuela. Perhaps he had believed
that, when he left her in her native land, it would be the end of
their relationship. But now here she was again. She had come
down on the brig Helena in the middle of September, and had
been given the cabin usually reserved for the maste/s wife. Cap-
tain Simpson, a good judge of Irish whisky and women, and in the
service of the patriots, believed himself a servant of Eros in bring-
ing her to Peru. In private, General Bolivar told him he was some-
thing else. In Quito there had been no problem of a husband; but
here in Peru . . . And even though James Thome was in Chile,
the disagreeable fact was that this was Lima, where Thome re-
sided. Here there could be no subterfuge, no disguise; and with
everyone all-knowing . . .

General Lara, thinking of the moment, spoke his mind. Manu-
ela's coming here was most inopportune. But Manuela was aware
of no "problem.** She brought her slaves and her trunks of clothes,
and settled down only a few squares from Bolivar's villa, in "my
house ... in the village of La Magdalena where I have always
resided.'*

Manuela then went about renewing her old friendships. She
ignored the "problem.** She drove in her two-wheeled cdesa
through the shabby streets of Lima; she moved casually in her
habit-pattern of months before, as if her life had not changed
since she left Lima a year ago. Her slaves, delighted to be in Lima,

84 The Four Seasons of Manuela

circulated again among the strange fraternities which the Negro
servants, freed and bound, were allowed. Manuela picked up the
business activities of her husband she held his power of attorney
and within days she was back in the intimate circles of Lima
society.

Casual affairs were commonplace in Lima, but there was an
accepted protocol; they were conducted en tapadillo on the
quiet; a lady never flaunted her love affairs in the public face. It
was socially unforgivable in Manuela even though her visits were
nocturnal; for "it was usually at night that Manuelita went to the
General's rooms."

This did not matter; it was known.

Once again Simon Bolivar was feeling the impact of Manuela's
personality. Of course it was delightful to see her in a fashionable
gown, the short sleeves puffed and the low decolletage showing
the tantalizing ivory of her breasts. And she was exciting to be
with, for she was a match for his passionate nature; and she knew
how to discipline his natural polygamy with a suspense which no
other woman that he had ever known possessed.

In some curious way, passion and utility had coalesced in her,
and he found that he was more and more relying on her judgments
of people. Manuela was in her element. Lima was, it seemed, cre-
ated for her, it was a sympathetic milieu for her type of being. She
had contact with the strangest congeries of people. She knew and
was intimate with all of Lima's nobility; she knew the patriots, the
vacillating and the strong; and the fact that she belonged to the
Order of the Sun put her on an equal footing with Peru's most dis-
tinguished families. Then through her husband's contacts she
knew all the English merchants; she spoke English with them,
and judged by the barometer of their business how they esti-
mated the success of the patriot cause. She kept her eyes and ears
open at all times, to sense the drift of feelings and opinions. She
knew intimately almost everyone with whom Bolivar had to deal,
their weaknesses and their hidden scandals. And her two slaves,
especially the irrepressible Jonotas of the barbarically colored tur-

Lima, City of Chaos 85

bans, brought her the talk, the rumors, the gossip of the lower
echelons of society. All this became part of Bolivar's network of
intelligence, and it was important. But more important still was
Manuela herself. She was bound to him in fierce loyalty. He could
depend on her, and in this immense land, divided against itself,
where he could never be sure of his trust, it was good to have
someone such as Manuela about: "I shall always be a foreigner to
most people and I shall always arouse jealousy and distrust."

Manuela was liked by all of Bolivar's staff, the Irish, the Eng-
lish, the native Americans. They found that she could transmit to
him many unpleasant truths which they could not tell him; she
had his ear in more ways than one. And while she idolized him,
she kept a sense of humor and proportion, and was never afraid to
expatiate to him on his faults. Manuela had suddenly become a
vital necessity to the Liberator.

By October, despite the objections of General Lara, Manuela
was officially added to Bolivar's staff. At the suggestion of Colonel
O'Leary, who in time became deeply attached to her, she was put
in charge of his personal archives. She took her new duties seri-
ously. And she dressed for the role. She gave herself the rank of
colonel and appeared at headquarters in blue tunic with scarlet
cuffs and collar; and on each golden epaulet, where a blue cloth
strip carried the symbol of rank, she embroidered a silver laurel
leaf. She flung herself into her duties with the fervor with which
she did everything, and she soon made herself so much a part of
the Liberator's menage that it did not seem at all outre to have her
attached to the general staff.

Jose Palacios, the General's major-domo, was delighted to have
her with them. His two mastiffs remembered her from Quito, and
when not walking beside the red-headed, blue-eyed Jose, they lay
on the cool sienna-colored tile floor beside Manuela. Palacios,
while he did not like her two slaves, was happy to share the re-
sponsibility of the Liberator's well-being with someone else. He
had promised Bolivar's mother whose maiden name of Palacios
he bore that he would never leave Sim6n y s side; and he never

86 The Four Seasons of Manuela

did. Although he could neither read nor write, he was remarkably
astute. His chromosomes had produced a startling pattern; with
Spanish, Negro and Indian blood in his veins, he had, strangely
enough, blue eyes and red curly hair. He was built like a gladiator,
yet he was as simple as a child; he had a head that was hard as
jacaranda and a heart as capacious as his big body. He and his
dogs followed Bolivar everywhere on long trips the two huge
beasts rode in traveling baskets and until Manuela came into
their menage he loved nothing else but these.

Manuela was now, as she wished, in the center of operations.
There was a steady stream of visitors to headquarters: a general
wanting more arms, an army paymaster complaining that he
needed silver if the troops were not to go unpaid again, merchants,
politicians, soldiers, mothers. Between audiences Bolivar, lying
in a hammock or furiously pacing back and forth, dictated to his
secretaries. His letters flooded South America and encircled the
globe letters to Italy, France, England, and North America.
Manuela worked closely with the secretaries: young Diego Ibarra,
a distant cousin of the General; Jose Perez, whose reputation with
the ladies was worse than hemlock; and Colonel Juan Santana,
the principal amanuensis. Juan became an understanding friend
to her, and there sprang up between them a lifelong tie, an indis-
putable connection without ambiguity. Santana, not much over
twenty-five, had been born in Caracas, but he had gone to college
in Baltimore and learned to speak English. It was difficult to serve
one as protean as Bolivar, and the General found him wanting in
enthusiasm:

Everything is cold in Santana: his spirit, his heart, his morals
... he has a melancholy humor and is already a young misan-
thrope. ... He is not a military man in spite of his title of Colo-
nel, but he knows how to keep a secret. Such is Santana.

But Manuela liked him, and he adored her; and throughout
the war she could always rely on Santana for intimate details of
her lover. He gave her copies of all the Liberator s personal letters

Lima, City of Chaos 87

to keep in her archives, and she guarded them like a castellan. She
allowed no exceptions to the ukase of Bolivar that no one should
see his letters except at his command. Even Heres, the Minister o
War, could not pry an important paper from her. At length he was
forced to complain to Bolivar:

I have need to publish an important document in facsimile. I
asked for the letter from Manuelita, but she, following your
orders, gave me great difficulty before I finally succeeded in ob-
taining it

There had been in the weeks that followed some improvement
in political affairs in Lima. Bolivar was able to convince the Con-
gress, which met to hear of his plans, of the necessity for his full
and complete control over Peru for the period of emergency. "I
promise you," he said, "that my authority will not exceed the time
necessary to prepare for victory .""

His name remained the talisman of ultimate victory. Even in
the darkest moments he never lost hope, and his optimism was re-
flected, for a time, in the people:

I am now more delighted with Lima every day. So far, I have
gotten along very well with everyone. The men respect me and
the women love me. That is all very nice. They hold many pleas-
ures for those who can pay for them. . . . Naturally I lack for
nothing. The food is excellent, the theater only fair, but adorned
by beautiful eyes . . . the carriages, horses, excursions, Te
Deums . . . nothing is lacking but money.

And unity. There had recently been more desertions; and in the
walled city of Trujillo, three hundred miles to the north, the sot-
disant President of Peru, the title-proud Jose de la Riva Agiiero,
was now in open traitorous rebellion; Bolivar's spies had inter-
cepted his correspondence with the Viceroy. He was making over-
tures to the Spanish enemy. Bolivar tried compromise and he
offered propitiation;

The ruin of Peru, Sir, is inevitable, if under these circumstances
you hesitate for a moment to accept my generous offer of amnesty.

88 The Four Seasons of Manuela

The offer was refused. Bolivar knew now that he must move,
but with caution; for this was no ordinary man. Riva Agiiero was
proud, capable, and as untouchable as a sensitive plant; he was an
unquiet character, with frigid manners and heroic gestures. He
had been bom in Lima in 1783 of a blood so blue it could have
been used as litmus paper; his mother was the daughter of the
Marquis de Monte Alegre, his father a grandee of Spain. He was
well educated and held several important posts under the Vice-
roy; but after the revolution began to take hold, he worked along-
side Manuela as a secret agent of San Martin. He was the author
of many of those seditious broadsides which republican agents
plastered on Lima's walls at night. When the city fell to the pa-
triots, he emerged as one of its leaders which verified, said
OTLeary, "the parable that those who come in at the eleventh hour
receive as much as those who have borne the heat and burden of
the day/*

Riva Agiiero belonged, however, to a class of men that is willing
to sacrifice the principle for the form. After the self -exiling of San
Martin he became the leader of Peru, and for the moment that
followed he was indefatigable. He raised money, floated a loan in
England, entered into an agreement with foreign merchants to fit
out the troops, and invited Bolivar to Peru. But fatal strategic
errors in sending out his troops to engage the royalists left the city
open to attack, and after the Spaniards had occupied Lima and
walked off with half a million dollars, the Congress tossed him out
of office. But he refused to be tossed. He fled to Trujillo where he
began to raise an army of his own and to conspire with the roy-
alist forces in the Andes. He was clever, but his very cleverness
was his undoing. Bolivar now had his correspondence with the
enemy. So, when Riva Agiiero's aide-de-camp rode into the Lib-
erator^ headquarters ostensibly to carry on negotiations, he was
shown the intercepted letters.

There was no doubt. The officer agreed to capture Riva Agiiero
for Bolivar. But Bolivar took no chances. As soon as the other had
departed on his perfidious mission, he gave the inarching orders

Lima, City of Chaos 89

to Ms troops and called up all his ships. Then on November 15th
he left Lima for the north to crush the opposition.

Manuela was now the grand vizier of what had once been the
Viceroy's villa. Lima, or at least its aristocratic society, was aghast
at her metamorphosis into the woman of Peru; the ladies were
shocked down to their silken ballet slippers. It was unthinkable.
This notorious little bastard! She had now was it really possible?
the same social power as a Viceroy's consort! With Bolivar gone,
and she in the villa, she had become a sort of mattTesse-en-titre of
the government! It was too much, quite too much.

A whispering campaign against her was already in progress.
Manuela reacted to it precisely as expected: no shadings, no pru-
dence, no balance. She made a point of going out of her way to
shock society; she used her power in army circles; and to cap the
climax she flung in the face of Josef a, the wife of the Marquis de
Torre Tagle, her own loose morals. It was an unwise thing to do,
even if it was Manuela's way.

"In Lima/* said her confidant, "Manuelita behaved with star-
tling imprudence. She became a MessaHna. The aide-de-camp of
the general told me some unbelievable things which Bolivar alone
ignored. But then lovers, when they are in love, are as blind as
husbands."

Then, to worsen matters, Bernardo Monteagudo returned to
Lima.

It was an act that was either very brave or very stupid. For if the
people of Lima could agree on nothing else, they agreed on
Monteagudo; he was universally hated. He had been perpetually
exiled from Peru, placed out of the protection of the law, yet now
he was above the law for he had returned to Lima under Bolivar's
protection. The public had full notice that to strike at little Dr.
Monteagudo was to strike at Bolivar; and there was no one yet in
Lima who could have nerved himself to raise a hand against the
Liberator. The aristocrats, who had suffered most from Mon-
teagudo, plotted his death openly, but fear stayed their hands.

90 The Four Seasons of Manuela

Meanwhile, with money supplied to him by the Peruvian treasury,
he kept up his opulent style of living. His table, thanks to the
French chef he had brought with him, was the most exquisite in
Lima, and coffee few people drank it was his passion. He ex-
hibited his showy exterior the diamond pin in his white stock,
the golden chain on his waistcoat, the pungent smell of eau de
cologne. Lima observed this with fury. No one was interested any
longer in the concealed depths of Monteagudo; the razor-sharp in-
telligence, the fine prose style, the incisive phrases. No one cared
a fig for his visions of America and the history-making Congress of
Panama, the League of American Nations, which he was now
drafting. Hatred allows no shadings: Monteagudo, there could
be no doubt, was marked for death.

The population of Lima had become a legion of discontent. A
chorus of female voices bewailed the scarcity of food and the
deamess of it. They cursed the royalists, the patriots, the army,
They cried out at the cost of supporting eight thousand inactive
troops, half of them foreigners. The people were sick of war.
They were angry at the privations, and at the depredations com-
mitted by both sides. The soldiers within Lima, as well as those
who held the fortress of Callao, demanded their wages, now six
months in arrears. And there were rumors that a group of aristo-
crats, once ardent patriots, were plotting to change sides again.

All this news, with the added spice of personalia, Manuela put
into her letters to Simon Bolivar.

At least Bolivar had been successful in one way. By the time he
reached the walled city of Trujillo, Riva Agiiero had been cap-
tured by his own officers, and the fear of civil war had been
averted. Released from an odious undertaking, Bolivar was gen-
erous to the rebels. He incorporated the officers and the soldiers
into his own army, and even though the Marquis de Torre Tagle
in Lima wanted the head of his rival, the defeated rebel was
allowed to go into exile. He eventually reached Belgium, where
he found some comfort in marrying Carolina de Loos, a Flemish
aristocrat.

Lima, City of Chaos 91

While the army was being reorganized, Simon Bolivar traveled
in the interior, trying to get an estimate of the supplies that he
could obtain for an offensive against the Spanish army. So
Manuela's letters about the state of affairs in Lima never came
to him. Instead Juan Santana answered:

MY ESTEEMED LADY,

At this moment I have received your letter with which you have
had the kindness to favor me; and I am all the more grateful to
you, as I have not kept my word that I would keep you informed,
having been absent from general headquarters and having re-
joined it only four days ago. In proof of my gratitude, I want to
be the first to give you the news that I know will be extremely
agreeable to you.

Within four days the General marches toward Lima, and I think
he will pass the whole summer in that city. The faction of Riva
Agiiero has been destroyed; his troops and this vast province obey
the legitimate government of Peru; and I confess that never has
the Liberator worked with such cleverness, with such political
skill and judgment, as on this occasion. If Peru is grateful, it must
give to this event all the credit of a brilliant victory; it prepares us
for another that will seal the glory of the Liberator and the inde-
pendence of this unhappy country. Ah, my senora Manuelita,
what a country this is, and what men! With what sorrow I see the
general taking it so much to heart; but I have confidence in his
good fortune, and no one can be unhappy who gives so much hap-
piness. Finally, senora, I would like to go on at length, there is
much I could say to you about these things; but my destiny is to
write a great deal, but nothing of my own. . . .

For the first time I sign myself

Your affectionate friend,
JUAN SANTAKA

Bolivar was paying heavily for his activity. He had had several
warnings, while he was riding up the Andes, that the strain was
too much, and Dr. Moore had tried in his Irish way to explain the
need for rest. Bolivar, as usual, would not listen. The inclination
toward tuberculosis which he had inherited from his mother had
already suggested itself, and Dr. Moore warned him of the

92 The Four Seasons of Manuela

"dreaded phthisis." Then It fell upon him. He coughed, spat up
blood, vomited, and for days lay shivering in agonies of ague. He
was brought aboard ship, but half way to Lima he had a coughing
fit so terrible that the ship's master feared for his life. The vessel
put into one of the desert harbors; and there at the village of
Pativilca he was carried ashore in a state of collapse. Without
doctor or medicine, he hovered for seven days between life and
death. Rumors circulated in Lima that he was dying. Manuela was
preparing to ride to him when a letter from Juan Santana stayed
her trip:

14 January, 1824
MY GRACIOUS LADY,

At last I have the pleasure to tell you that the Liberator has im-
proved so much from his illness that he is now in a state of con-
valescence. Nevertheless, I feel I should tell you at the same time
that our return to Lima is not to be as soon as I promised it would,
or as soon as all of us wish it to be, My friend Medina is the bearer
of this note and so he will be able to inform you of all you wish
to know, and he will doubtless have much pleasure in doing so.

Here we are like souls carried off by the devil, dead from dis-
gust and bored as we have never been bored before.

So Bolivar was out of danger. But Lima was not. Since the news
of the Liberator's illness, there had been renewed activity among
the dissidents. Manuela now had positive proof that the Marquis
de Torre Tagle was in communication with the royalists. Bolivar
had heard this from other sources too, and he raised himself from
his sickbed to dictate a letter to the man he had once called "a
gentleman in the whole extension of the word":

Believe me, believe me, the country will not be saved in this
way. My own was liberated because we had unity and discipline.
You cannot imagine what this war for liberty can be and can cost.
We endured war to extinction for fourteen years, and you com-
plain about black bread for four years. . . .

It had little effect, for Jose, Marquis de Torre Tagle, was only a
remnant of the patriot that he had been. His pride was vast and

Lima, City of Chaos 98

puerile, and he was completely dominated by his wife, Josef a, who
influenced him against Bolivar. She had been insulted by Manuela,
by the rudeness of the Colombian troops, and by the ostentation
of Monteagudo; and this, combined with the general discontent,
had changed the sentiments of the Marquis. A stout, florid, hand-
some gentleman, who wore the blue uniform of a general of the
Peruvian Legions, Torre Tagle had passed through all the phases
of politics. Extravagant, indecisive, susceptible to every fleeting
impression, he was as variable as a New England spring. He be-
came a patriot when perfidy was in fashion; and when it seemed
expedient to be a turncoat, he changed sides without scruples or
doubts. The revolution had left him in possession of his offices, his
emoluments, his estates, and his noble titles. Now the revolution
had become inconvenient.

On the 4th of February at precisely 3 A.M., the fortress of
Callao was betrayed. And a few days later the Marquis de Torre
Tagle himself opened the gates of Lima to the royalists.

7

THE STEP OF
CONQ UERO RS

I HE godos were athirst.

They rode into Lima on February 12 through the East Gate,
fanned out through the city, and within an hour threw a cordon
around the five gates o its walls; Lima was hermetically sealed.
Then, led by their informers, the blue-clad troops made a house-to-
house search for the republican leaders.

It was fortunate for Manuela, for she was high on the lists of the
wanted, that she was out at the villa. This allowed her the precious
interval to effect an escape. As it was, had it not been for one of
her slaves, she would have been caught completely unaware.
Jonotds had been carrying on with a soldier of the Callao fortress,
who had warned her of trouble in the offing. As a precaution
Manuela had begun to box Bolivar's archives; she was deep in the
process when the news reached her. Three hundred officials of
the republican government went over with Torre Tagle to the
royalists, and with them a cavalry battalion of the Peruvian
Legions.

All was confusion at the villa. Many soldiers, fearing for their
lives, ripped off their uniforms and slid into the rags of the
peasants. No one paid any heed to the commands of the officers. It
looked for the moment as though everyone would be lost. Then
General Miller rode up with a corps of cavalry that he had
managed to salvage from the betrayal, threw a cordon around

The Step of Conquerors 95

Magdalena to protect the villa, and allowed Manuela time to pack.
Other officials who had escaped the royalist dragnet rode up to
headquarters General Lara, tall, calm and unruffled; Montea-
gudo, elegant in his English riding coat, bewailing the loss of Ms
French chef; Heres, the War Minister, and all the rest of Bolivar's
cabinet.

Judge Prevost, the United States Consul, hurrying by to take an
American ship to Trajillo, said, "I am persuaded the whole plot is
the work of those surrounding Torre Tagle." And he had a moment
to make a report to President John Quincy Adams:

SIR:

On the 4th of the last month [February], the black troops of
Bs. Ays. [Buenos Aires] to whom had been conEded the Castle of
Callao, in number of about 1100 mutinied, and hauling down the
Flag of Peru, refused to acknowledge the further authority of the
President and Congress, until their arrears in wages were paid. . . .
At the expiration of a week, the Negroes liberated the Prisoners
confined in that Fortress, hoisted the Spanish flag and sent an
Agent to Canterac [General of the royalist forces] in order to ad-
vise him of the event . . . and a Body of 1000 Spaniards followed
to sustain the Conspirators.

And then he was gone to Trujillo, to put himself under the pro-
tection of Bolivar's troops. Manuela managed to pack all the
archives, Bolivar's uniforms, his gold service plate, and some of
her own clothes. Then, slipping into her uniform, she pined the
squadron.

At night, under a crescent moon, they moved off across the
desert. With no trees to give them cover, General Miller had to
lead them in wavering patterns between the sand dunes so as to
cut down their silhouette. Somewhere along the way they were
joined by a group of guerrillas who formed part of Miller's cavalry.
Quietly, with no sound except the swish of the sand under the
horses' roofs, they made their way in the direction of the Pacific.
Once off the main routes, they crossed the swollen Ricnac River,
made a wide detour around the little desert-bound villages, and

96 The Four Seasons of Manuela

changed their direction toward the east, riding all night until they
came to the bare, inclining hills of the lower Andes.

The little squadron was dwarfed by the overwhelming Andes, a
rock-hard world set on edge. The mule path they followed was so
narrow that their stirruped feet scraped the overhanging cliffs; it
wound round and round in caracoled ascent. Abysses yawned be-
low them like the mouths of hell, and a slip of the horses' hoofs, a
miscalculation of the rider, could cause one to slide off in fearful
silence to eternity. The friable, naked rocks gave way, as the
troops slowly mounted, to slopes covered with cactus. At a still
higher elevation swathes of stunted trees sprang up from crannies
of earth held in the interstices of rock; then these yielded, on the
high plateaus, to sere grass clumps and gray-green, sharp-spined
agave plants.

Two miles above sea level they rode between snow-covered
mountains over a vast rolling plain, the dreaded puna. It was
utterly deserted, lifeless and inert: a moonscape. In the incredibly
blue sky dark silhouettes of condors glided, and from the chalice of
a dainty red flower, growing beside an ice-cold rill, a humming-
bird no larger than a human thumb was trying vainly to coax out
a drop of honey. For hours, there was nothing else to see on the
lonely puna. "-

The montoneras rode ahead of the squadron, constantly on the
alert for the enemy. These mounted guerrillas tireless in the saddle
had been taught by war instincts that were subhuman; they could
scent the enemy before he appeared, and when pursued they could
melt into the landscape of tie static puna and vanish out of sight.
They were of the dispossessed. They were men whose families had
been butchered by the royalists, whose homes had been destroyed,
and whose knds had been made desolate by this war without
rules. In 1821 the town of Reyes on the shores of Lake Junin had
been gutted by the enemy; of its four thousand people, only three
hundred men survived. They formed themselves into a guerrilla
band. Cutthroats, murderers, men on the run, the landless, the

The Step of Conquerors 97

hungry, the disillusioned joined these montoneras. There were no
qualifications, other than hate and the ability to ride a horse.
Cruel and relentless, they served without pay, taking their money,
and in no very pretty manner, from whatever godos they met.
With their wide-brimmed felt hats, ponchos over the shoulders,
and lances, cutlasses and cocked pistols, their mere appearance
was enough to throw a passer-by into a frenzy of fear. They were
of inestimable value to the patriot cause even while being a terror
to the officials; and the only one in all Peru who did not fear them
was William Miller, the general now riding beside Mamiela.

This slender, blue-eyed Englishman would have seemed the
last man in the world fit to command the montoneras; but Miller,
in charge of all patriot cavalry, was a man who had earned their
respect. The left hand that held his reins was permanently dis-
abled from a bullet wound; his face was scarred by an explosion
of powder that had occurred as he was preparing Congreve
rockets to bomb the Spanish fleet in Callao harbor. He had lain in
torment under a plaster-cast mask, fed for weeks through a silver
straw before he again saw the light of day. He limped, from an-
other wound he had got in Chile while fighting in the patriot cause.
He was fearless, he was a good officer, and the montoneras idolized
him. Miller had been born in Kent, had entered the English army
at sixteen, and had fought in Spain against Napoleon's legions. As
war was Ms forte, he came after Waterloo to Argentina to serve in
the wars of independence. He was in every important action. He
had fired the first shots of the campaign against the Spaniard in
Peru, and he would fire the last. A gallant man, this General
Miller, with his lithe figure almost feminine in its delicacy, his
long nose, delicate eyebrows and light hair and an intelligent
one. It was this same warrior who would one day furnish the de-
scriptions of the Andes over which they were now riding to
William Prescott, for The Conquest of Peru. A discerning man, too
lie liked Manuela.

For days the squadron rode northward over the puna in search
of Bolivar. He was not in light, as were they, but lie kept shifting

98 The Four Seasons of Manuela

his headquarters so as to throw the royalists off his trail. He was
also, with his staff, scouring the countryside for men, for f ood, for
clothing, to be sent down to the army that was building on the
desert coasts. No one was permitted to reveal his whereabouts or
the exact location of his headquarters; so the squadron escorting
Manuela, his personal papers, and his Ministers of State, Finance,
and War his "ambulatory government'* moved over the raw
face of the Andes in search of him.

Now they learned what the army must face, once it left the
warmer lands of the coast and mounted the Andes to do battle
with the royalists. The world here was bleak and dun-colored, the
temperature extreme. At night it fell below freezing. In the day
the mercury rose to ninety degrees. There was no food except what
the Indians raised for themselves. Cattle roamed the hills as un-
tamed as lions; they had to be hunted like wild game. There was
no place of refuge from the winds. Troops crossing the puna
during a hailstorm had to cover their faces with their knapsacks,
for a man could easily be flayed by the huge ice drops flying with
the speed of a spent bullet Manuela had seen the hands of a
regiment caught in such a storm; they were raw, cut, and bleeding,
like diced beefsteak. And there was the feared soroche., the swoon-
ing mountain sickness; for in the higher areas of the Andes, over
two and a half miles above sea level, the rare atmosphere made
each breath a conscious effort. Once a battalion of patriot troops
passed Manuela on rapid march in the puna; and suddenly, as they
breasted a rise in the ground, man after man toppled over as if
cut down by an invisible scythe. Nowhere in world history had
battles been fought on so inhospitable a terrain.

Manuela had been so numbed by the swift pace of events that
not until now had she been able to appraise the disaster of Lima.
The situation was appalling. With Lima and the fortress of Callao
held by the Spaniards, it meant that only a thin strip of northern
Peru was left in the hands of the patriots. The Andes were a no
man's land. The country could support no large body of troops;
the potatoes, the barley, the (juinoa grown in these bare uplands

The Step of Conquerors 99

were barely enough to feed the Indians. Bolivar had lost the
capital, the treasury, the port that would have brought Mm sup-
plies. His government was three men on horseback, his soldiers
were without the means to attack, and the enemy, ten thousand
strong, encircled him. He was faced with disaster; yet how had
Simon Bolivar replied to the question: "What will you do now,
my General?"

"I? I? Why, I wffl triumph ."

The squadron protecting the "ambulatory government* divided
along the Andean way. Jacinto Lara, impatient at having to gear
his pace to the slow step of the pack mules carrying Manuela's
trunks and Bolivar's boxed archives disgusted, too, with the
perfumy atmosphere of Dr. Monteagudo's eau de cologne took
a troop of lancers, turned west, and headed toward the town of
Huaras.

The little village with its sienna-colored tile roofs lay in a pro-
tected valley below the serrated crests of the most magnificent
mountains in Peru. On both sides, east and west, four-mile-high
peaks covered by eternal glaciers held the storm winds in check.
Soldiers in the blue and red uniform of the Peruvian Legion were
on guard in front of the largest house at the plaza, and at the
entrance flew the gonfalon of the Liberator.

General Lara found Bolivar paper-deep in administrative de-
tails. He had just returned from a personal survey in which he
had sequestered herds of cattle, cloth from the looms of the
Indians, and silver from the churches. After they had exchanged
views on the Lima situation, Lara announced in a voice of extreme
irritation; ^Senora Manuelita and Doctor Monteagudo have ar-
rived. 9 *

Bolivar received this news with little outward show of interest,
and turned back to the work on his desk. But General Lara would
not be stayed. "Here we are on the eve of cutting up the godos,
and Your Excellency is again carrying women with Mm'* and lie
included Monteagudo among the "women.**

"Well, they run the risks of the campaign.**

100 The Four Seasons of Manueh

"That is all very well/' responded Lara, "but the truth Is, Your
Excellency., that someone will kill that little Monteagudo."

Bolivar rose up from behind the table, his voice shrill as it
always was whenever he was angry:

"Just let them touch a hair of his head . . ."

And the subject was closed.

Despite the press of duties, Bolivar sent a letter to Manuela
for she had taken up residence in Huamachuco, a hundred miles
distant telling her of his delight that she had arrived safely, and
expressing hope that soon the campaign would allow him to see
her. Then he was off again with his staff, scouring the Andes for
the sinews of war.

Along the way he decided to put up for some days at the village
of San Ildef onso de Caras. It was like any other of the little villages
in the Andes, houses of red tile clustering around a plaza domi-
nated by a crumbling ancient church. The officers of the advance
guard had their instructions. On their arrival in the village they
sought out the Mayor, a rustic fellow whose flowing river of chins
cascaded down into a soiled neckband.

In a curt military voice they repeated by rote the requirements
of General Bolivar:

"There are to be rooms for His Excellency and staff, a house for
a squadron of cavalry, good forage for the horses; and for personal
consideration, a good room, a good table, a good bed, etcetera, et-
cetera, etcetera."

Did the Mayor understand? Yes, the Mayor understood. He
knew how precise General Bolivar was about matters of this kind.
Yes, he knew, he would follow word for word the request as given
by the officers.

When they had gone, Don Pablo called in the town elders, who
still wore the rural dress of the last century, coarse homespun
stockings and knee breeches. To them he explained the desires of
the General, who was to arrive that night. They understood all,
or almost all, until they came to the "etceteras." Here an argument
developed over just what was implied; but Don Pablo, who had

The Step of Conquerors 101

once visited Lima and thus knew something o the world, believed
that he knew what the General referred to.

That night, with the full moon reflecting its coldness on the
snows of the Huaras Mountains and making the world as bright as
day, Simon Bolivar clattered up to the village of San Ildefonso.
Don Pablo, in a newly washed shirt, stood at the door as Bolivar
strode into the apartment prepared for him. Don Pablo, rubbing
his hands, itemized all that the General had required. When
Bolivar entered his bedroom, there, standing in fearsome awe,
with tears ready to spill from their eyes, were three of the best-
looking young ladies that Don Pablo could scare up on short
notice.

"And these," said Bolivar with a sweep of his hand, "who are
they?"

Shaking all his six chins, Don Pablo shuffled his way to each of
the three in turn.

"These, Your Excellency, are Etcetera, Etcetera, Etcetera/'

The captive pigeons were released but another, named Manuel-
ita Madrono, a little prize of eighteen years, of whom it was said
that there was nothing else like her in the whole province, was
singled out by the General. She bedded with Bolivar that night,
and, as the wits at his headquarters had it, on all other nights until
the full moon waned. Of course Manuela Saenz heard of it; the
episode could not be kept private even by a hundred miles of
mountains. Alone, bored, angered by what she thought to have
been a senseless affair, she sat down at Huamachuco and wrote
her friend Juan Santana:

28th May
MY DEAR FRIEND;

Misfortune is with me, all things have their end; the General
no longer thinks of me, in nineteen days he has scarcely written
me twice. What is wrong? You have always professed to be my
friend, can you tell me the reason? I believe you won't, because
you will hold your tongue. And why should I ask you? But of
whom shall I ask it? No one; only my own heart which is the best
and only friend that I have. I feel inclined to commit some ab-

102 The Four Seasons of Manuela

surdity; afterward I shall tell you what It is and you can tell me
if what I do is not justified.

Remember in my absence her who is your very good friend,

MANUELA

P.S. Good-by until accident brings us together. I am very ill and
could die, because now I no longer care to live that is sufficient
reason, don't you think?

These were rare moments in Manuela's life; she had unbounded
confidence in the efficacy of her charm, and her grief was short-
lived.

And soon Bolivar, in his interminable wandering, came to
Huamachuco. She welcomed him with passion. Their reconcilia-
tion was delicious. It was only a brief moment of love snatched
from the turmoil of revolution; all the morrows were uncertain,
yet the mingling of terror and delight intoxicated them.

And then Bolivar was gone.

So it went for weeks, months. They would correspond, then the
break in the communications would be taken up by Santana; and
Manuela, protected by a body of Colombian lancers, would follow
the trail of Bolivar, dragging the boxes of archives across the in-
dented face of the Andes.

As she took the path that led to the Huaras headquarters,
Manuela could see that preparations were already in progress for
the crossing of the mountains. The strategy was so obvious, no one
in the command made effort to hide it; Bolivar was going to lead
his army right up the Andes into the regions commanded by the
royalists, and there seek out a place for a decisive battle.

General Sucre was in charge of the Andean crossing. He knew
what such, an operation would entail; he had fought in the high
ranges for fifteen years, and he knew that for every soldier that
died in battle, a dozen died on the march. So all along the planned
route of the army they were erecting wooden shelter sheds. Every-
thing had to be brought up to this treeless land from the dry coast,
or from the wet jungle. While carpenters put up the rude shelters,
the soldiers kept off the royalist scouts, Indians were put to work

The Step of Conquerors 103

to cut champas, the native peat, for fuel; other Andean dwellers
were made to reveal the location of caves, where supplies could be
cached. Into the caves, where the temperature was permanently at
freezing, streams of Indians carried piles of charqui, the Andean
sun-dried llama beef, rice, tobacco, salt, and sacks of cocaine-
yielding coca leaves. The Indian laborers on the operation were
taken under guard to the coast to be held until the army's ascent,
to make certain that none would reveal the storage places to the
royalists.

In the town of Huaras, Manuela was woman again. She flung
off her riding uniform, selected her most feminine of dresses, and
then gave herself over to Jonotas, who twisted the heavy strands
of blue-black hair into a crown-like tiara, interwoven with freshly
cut flowers. Now scented with verbena, wonderfully coiffed and
gowned in an off-shoulder dress to reveal the alabaster of her
flesh, Manuela was ready for the impromptu banquet.

Bolivar was gone, but his officers were preparing to give this
terrible war one of its moments of pleasure. O'Connor, who shared
a room with General Sucre, was there; so was Colonel Sandes, de-
lighted that he could wear his dress uniform of blue trimmed with
scarlet, its golden-fringed epaulets carrying the blue strap and
golden laurel leaf of a full colonel. Others of Manuela's old friends
were present Captain Simpson, who had brought her down from
Ecuador on the Helena, and the lively William Fergusson, his
Spanish spiced with a Dublin brogue, who was already deep in
the Irish whisky which Simpson had brought It was the same
Fergusson, but a bit subdued and chastened since his court-martial
he had been condemned to death for disobeying orders, and
had been saved only at the last minute by Bolivar.

Charles Sowerby was especially gay. His men had ambushed
a royalist supply train and had brought him back food and wines
which had been intended for the Viceroy. He looked boyish and
young, even though at twenty-nine he had seen every horror of
war that could be created by man. He had marched halfway across
Russia, fought with Napoleon's legions at Borodino,, and in the

104 The Four Seasons of Manuela

Americas had taken part In all the engagements. He had, and he
always made a point of it, emerged from all of this without a
scratch.

And so had Bruiz, who was trying to understand the French
that Manuela was speaking to him. A gallant little Parisian with
flamboyant manners, he had been a page to Napoleon. He too had
seen service in Russia; he had been in the first contingent that
swept into Moscow, and his handsome face showed a saber scar
that ran from his ear to the corner of his mouth.

The evening as it went on gradually dissolved into a bacchanal.
Jonotas demonstrated the lascivious napanga, Manuela enlivened
it with the fashionable Peruvian hondu, a bolero which she danced
to the tapping of Jonotas's fingers on a borrowed snare drum.
Fergusson did an Irish jig. Even Sucre, who was always restrained
at these gatherings, joined in and danced with Manuela.

Some time toward the end of the evening Sucre, "that complete
gentleman/* as O'Connor called him, turned in seriousness to
Arthur Sandes. Everyone present knew that both Sucre and Sandes
were in love with the same girl, the lovely eighteen-year-old
Mariana, daughter of the Marquis de Solando, whom they had
met at the Victory Ball in Quito.

"Don Arturo," challenged Sucre, "they say that you have the
promise of marriage of the young daughter of the Marquis de
Solando* I also want her. Now, if you will permit, let us try our
luck to see who gets her. Let us toss a peso to see who gets the
hand of the little Marquesa. If you lose, I will send my offer of
marriage this very hour to Quito, even though it is a thousand
miles away, so that I may marry her."

"Why not?" said Sandes. "Who knows that we might not both be
killed in this bloody war, and it won't make any difference
anyway/*

O'Connor took a peso tossed it into the air.

"Heads/* shouted Sucre.

The coin showing the profile of the King of Spain the Roman
nose, the Hapsburg lip on one side, the arms of Castile and Leon

The Step of Conquerors 105

on the reverse, spun and fell, rolled about, then came to a tinkling
halt on the floor. Staring upward was the imperial face of
Charles IV.
Sucre had won.

Behind the walls of Trajillo, the third city of Peru, Bolivar had
created his army. He had taken the remnants of the units from
Argentina and Chile.* joined them to the Peruvian Legions and the
Colombian Corps, and put them under a unified command. Blue
tunics trimmed with scarlet cuffs formed the official uniform, but
cloth was so scarce that Bolivar was happy to buy up on credit
and therefore at fantastic prices whatever was offered to him
by English merchants. They had sent to Europe for every military
garb that could be purchased. There were greatcoats designed to
cover Frenchmen on their march to Moscow, hand-me-downs
from the battle of Waterloo. Some officers wore patent-leather
bicornes, some grenadiers wore the bearskin shakos of the Guard,
others were fortunate to get in the distribution Wellington boots
or thigh-high gaiters, but the army in general wore sandals, fatas,
made from green leather. Each company was given a bullock's
skin, and every soldier carved out his piece of hide to fashion his
own boots. But despite the bizarre costumes it was a fine-looking
army. General William Miller, who had command of the cavalry,
stated to a friend, "I assure you that the Colombian infantry, as
well as the cavalry, could hold a parade in St James' Park and
would attract attention/*

Still, without Lima and its mint, Bolivar was troubled over
money, or rather over the lack of money; so he put all ranks on
quarter pay. A captain, who earned seventy-five dollars monthly,
could draw only eighteen dollars. A private, whose pay was
ten dollars, had to surrender four dollars for food and two for
clothing; the remainder was halved, so the foot soldier received
fifty cents a week. But at least he got it. And so a new spirit was
coming into the army.

Bolivar had been ruthless in building and supplying his forces,

106 The Four Seasons of Manuela

He impressed reluctant Peruvians into the ranks so as to make
them take full share in the campaign for their own liberty; the
levies were often cruel and unjust; but then so was the whole
procedure of war. He stripped the churches of their silver, he
took the ponchos of the Indians for his soldiers, he preempted
cattle from their owners, sometimes with receipts, sometimes
without acknowledgment.

But above all he wanted to keep up the spirit of his army, for his
men were faced with one of the most horrible marches in the his-
tory of warfare. He personally saw to it that they were fed as well
as possible. One large bullock was allotted daily for every hun-
dred men. The hide was saved for sandals and the flesh divided.
The soldiers squatted about fires, roasting their beef > washing it
down with the corn-beer chicha. Two handfuls of dried corn,
eaten roasted, replaced bread as part of the daily rations. Some-
times the food was augmented with rice, vegetables and charquL

Still there were not enough trained soldiers for Bolivar's re-
quirements and he again pleaded with his Vice-President in
Bogota for more men: "If I am sent troops, freedom will follow."

He had yet to win his rival Santander over to his over-all plan.
Everything had happened thus far as Santander said it would:
Peru was a political morass, and Bolivar had fallen into it because
of his insistence that this must be the final battleground. So again
Santander deliberately hesitated, and evaded the requests for
more troops. Bolivar then accused him of trying to hide behind the
letter of the Constitution, once again saw him as the "man of laws'*
who was purposely withholding the means of victory. After that
the Liberator's letters grew increasingly abusive.

Santander, sitting at his desk in Bogota far from the battlefields,
his hands folded over the balloon of his belly, complained to all
those who would listen, not counting those who would not: "The
Liberator thinks I am like God and can say, "Let it be done* and
it will be done. So he asks pitilessly for arms and men, and the
worst of it is Bolivar gets all the acclaim, while the Peruvians fail
to recognize the efforts of the Colombian government/* But to

The Step of Conquerors 107

Bolivar's taunts about being a mere "man of laws** lie replied
more directly:

Nothing is so painful to me as your official letter in which you
blame this government for all the Peruvian ills, because it regards
your demands for more troops with seeming indifference. I am an
honorable man, my General, and my conduct in these matters de-
serves from no one, and least of all from you, such an unjust and
deliberate censure. I rule Colombia, not Peru. The laws that were
given me, by which to rule this Republic, have nothing to do with
Peru; and their character does not change because Colombia's
President, Your Excellency, commands an army on foreign soil.
Either there are laws, or there are none . . . And if there are,
they must be kept and obeyed.

When copies of this correspondence came to Manuela to be pnt
in Bolivar's archives, she was vehement. What sort of man was this
Santander, to attack the Liberator's glory! Manuela fulminated
against him as if he were the enemy, rather than those regiments
of godos who were lying in wait in the security of the Andes. But
soon all these specious arguments over the metaphysics of *laws"
came to an end. The time for decision was at hand; the army was
on the march.

All through the latter part of June, the soldiers came through
the valley of Huaras on their way to climb the Andes. Day after
day the troops, nine thousand in. number three divisions of foot,
one of cavalry, one of mounted grenadiers snaked up the moun-
tain pass. From this point onward, the army advanced in three
columns, each taking a different route. Thus, if the royalists at-
tempted an ambuscade on the treacherous narrows of the moun-
tains, the whole of the force would not be imperiled. The mounted
montoneras, armed with funnel-shaped shotguns, went ahead of
the columns to guard the passes; behind them the cavalry, each
man mounted on a mule, and leading his fighting horse. In singje
file, so narrow were the passes, came the infantry, slowly mounting
the defiles o the Andes. Far behind the soldiers followed the com-
missary, driving ahead of them six thousand head of cattle* And

108 The Four Seasons of Manuela

somewhere lost in this panoply of war was Manuela, mounted,
dressed in her own colonel's uniform, over which she had flung
a red and blue alpaca poncho. Her papers, her slaves and her
equipage, despite the protests of General Lara, formed a small
squadron of its own.

All day long trumpets as means of communication sounded
through the valleys, their notes echoing back and forth between
the rock walls, rolling down to the unseen bottoms. It was a slow
and painful march. Day upon day the climb, then the restless
night with its numbing cold. Those who were unable to reach one
of the wooden shelters erected for this purpose died standing
against the rock walls. And the mules, unable to forage among the
inhospitable rocks, grew weak and lost their sureness of foot.
Several times each day a mule would slip off the narrow ledge and
plunge downward into space, dragging its rider with it. The
terrified soldiers hugged the wall as they heard the screams of the
falling man, the thud of a body as it hit the bottom, the rumble
of falling stone, and then the eerie silence. . . . Once more the
bark of command, and the soldiers continued their slow, almost
funereal pace upward. . , .

Thus it went day upon day.

Graves now began to appear. With every mile gained, a soldier
died. Yet the stirring news was that the bulk of the army had
passed over the serrate Andes and had gained the flat cold lands of
the puna. The royalists had failed to halt the columns. They did
not know, because of the tactics of advancing in three columns,
whether this was a reconnaissance in force, or the main effort;
and when they discovered that Bolivar was moving up his whole
army, nine thousand strong, it was too late to stop him.

Still the treeless wind-swept puna swarmed with royalist
cavalry, and Manuela was in danger from them every foot of the
way. She knew that she was high on the proscribed lists; that,
woman or no, she would dangle from a gibbet should she be cap-
tured. As for Simon Bolivar, she had not seen him for weeks. He
was to make his new headquarters at the ancient hamlet o

The Step of Conquerors 109

Huanuco in the central Andes, but she would be quartered else-
where. So it was agreed between Santana and herself that, in their
letters > they would use the code word "Colonel" for Bolivar. Thus
if any letter fell into the hands of royalist scouts, they would not
be able to plot the location of the general. On June 23, she had
her first word from Santana:

MY ESTEEMED LADY:

At this moment Luis has presented himself to ask me for a pass-
port. I do not want to lose this chance to greet you and to ask you
a thousand things that I want to know; how was your journey?
You will forgive my curiosity; the interest that I have in every-
thing that touches you obliges me to take this step that another
time would be indiscreet I remember that many times you have
placed your confidence in me, and certainly it is what I appreciate
most. I do not know why I did not see you when you visited head-
quarters in Huamachuco. I went in search of you at the house of
the Colonel, but as you were speaking French, I went to mine
with the intention of returning in the morning; but upon leaving
I knew that you had not arisen. I shall speak of everything at one
time. The 28th we go to Cerro de Pasco, the 10th of August we
shall begin operations, and the army is reuniting. You will say
that I am an extravagant gentleman, but what would you have
me say, my lady? Certainly I shall not speak to you of snow, grate-
fulness, and duty.

Give me your orders because I want to serve you.

There was little for Manuela to do now but wait. Bolivar, who
usually turned out a torrent of letters even while on the march,
had no time for dictation; he was now the warrior searching for a
battleground. His three armies had reunited, and he was repairing
the damage they had sustained in the ascent. The royalists had
accepted the challenge; his scouts reported a build-up to the south
of the blue-and-gold-clad troops.

On the 18th of July, Santana again wrote her about the details
of headquarters, reported on Bolivar from the little village of
Huriaca, and managed to squeeze something amusing out of the
terrible moments of war:

110 The Four Seasons of Manuela

MY ESTEEMED LADY:

Three days ago we arrived in this town and we wiU be in it for
some time. Things do not all go as the Colonel would like it
They follow their course, and in war things are always slow. Many
here are despairing, but I arm myself with my philosophy. You
will say that this phrase is long, but actually I have nothing to
say to you, although I never lack desire to write you. Truly I have
no head for anything, and to complete this letter I only lack some
of your notes to excite my imagination. You will say I am a very
bad-humored gentleman. No, my lady, when I talk with you all
this is dissipated, and I am a better man, and who would not be
with you? You will say I am a flatterer. No, I am frank, my friend-
ship for you has something of gratitude, and is as disinterested as
it is sincere. I have always told you that the day I say good-by to
Bolivar I shall ask nothing of him and shall be grateful for every-
thing. You understand, madaine. As for English, you have never
told me when you would like to write in that language. Do you
think I am writing just to write?

Torre and Dr. Charles Moore arrived this morning, and yester-
day came Monteagudo. Tomorrow we expect the army. The
Colonel is well although he has been somewhat iE. You have
told me nothing about your letters from Quito. Have you received
them? Did I fulfill my promise or not? All, all is for you, and for
always.

On a hill commanding a wide view, General Bolivar was re-
viewing his troops. This was one of the finest armies that he had
ever commanded; as far as his eyes could see to the clear unob-
structed horizon, the troops were assembling. At this spot, twelve
thousand feet high, he looked upon one of the most spectacular
panoramas in the Americas. At his back, to the west, were the
jagged peaks of the Andes over which he had led his troops; to
the east, clouded by fogs, lay the Amazon; on the flat plain to the
north was a large glacially cold lake, out of which flowed a stream
which was the highest source of the Amazon River. The pampas
surrounding that lake were to be Bolivar's battleground. He had
chosen the place of action. The royalist divisions were coming
to him, and his scouts reported that long columns o the enemy
were converging here on the plains of Junin.

The Step of Conquerors ill

Nine thousand troops paraded in front of him. It was truly an
allied army veterans of the battles for Quito and Lima, others
who had crossed the Andes with San Martin to fight in Chile,
soldiers who had lived through the "war to the death" in Vene-
zuela, and among the foreign legions survivors of the battles of
the Rhine, of Moscow and of Paris.

General Miller himself led the cavalry. A fine powdered dust,
raised by the thousands of hoofs, heralded their appearance; then
they came thundering by. They were the best horsemen in the
world: gauchos from the pampas of the Argentine, who could pick
up a silver peso from the ground at full gallop; guasos of Chile,
who had ridden since childhood; llaneros from the flat llanos of
Venezuela, wearing their jaguar-skin shakos at a cocked angle;
and, with the regular cavalry, the much-feared Peruvian
montoneras.

The first test of strength was at hand. It was August. The
royalists, misled by faulty intelligence, moved to the east of the
lake, spending their endurance in a long march, for they believed
they were to deal with only a division of the rebels. Instead they
ran into the whole patriot army. A retreat was ordered. Bolivar
then sent his troops on a forced march up the other side of the lake,
in an attempt to cut off the whole army of royalists. In the after-
noon patriot scouts on the heights overlooking the plains saw the
retreating godos five miles away. The officers had difficulty in re-
straining their soldiers. The cavalry changed from their rnules
to their horses, took up their twelve-foot-long lances, and
moved in swift pursuit; the whole army was put into movement to
follow.

It was late, and the long shadows of the freezing night were
already upon the earth. The mountain Indians came out of their
grass-thatched mud huts, and climbed to places of vantage to
watch the spectacle. Now the royalists had stopped their retreat,
swung their numerically superior cavalry into line, and prepared
for a rear-guard action.

And down on them poured the patriots, hoofs dramming the

112 The Four Seasons of Manuela

plain and voices raised in savage yells. Then the royalist cavalry,
responding to the trumpeters, spurred their horses forward in full
gallop. The lines met with terrific impact. Lances were propelled
with such force that even their shafts passed through enemy
bodies. The force of the charge carried the patriots through the
enemy formations, and in a moment the battle was a formless
melee. Lances were dropped, and the two forces slashed at each
other with sabers. Not a shot was fired. The patriots retreated,
then rallied. Now a reserve of Peruvian cavalry thundered into
action, and under the shock of this charge the godos broke and
fled. After them came Mille/s cavalry, hacking and slashing. Then
the dark of night was upon them. The enemy had broken off the
engagement and gone into full retreat; the patriots had defeated in
one hour the flower of the imperial legions of Spain. Hundreds of
dead lay around the field. Riderless horses, wounded horses,
neighing in horror, trampled fallen men. The wounded, fearing
the freezing night, kept screaming for their comrades. One royalist,
pinned to the ground by the spear that had impaled him, kept
sliding his body up and down the shaft until a passing soldier
blew out his brains. All night long, in the light of candle lanterns,
the patriots searched out the wounded, but the Indians had
already stripped the fallen of their uniforms, and those who were
not found at once died of the cold.

Inside an Indian hut, where the limp red gonfalon of Simon
Bolivar hung on a lance, the staff officers were appraising their vic-
tory. They had lost seven officers and fifty soldiers dead, less than
a hundred wounded; the enemy had lost six times that number.
The effect, like the victory, would be as Simon Bolivar foresaw
enormous. It was the first time that the legions of Spain had met
his allied armies in formal combat. The triumph gave heart to his
army; to those who had passed to the royalist side it would give
pause, and to the wavering it would bring strength. Now that his
soldiers had smelled blood and won a battle from the highly
vaunted godos, his orders were to follow the retreating enemy,

The Step of Conquerors 113

pick out a suitable place, and there fight a decisive battle. In the
light of a hurricane lamp the blood-smeared officers gave a toast
to the victory.

There was only one officer present who did not lift his glass. He
could not; an old acquaintance had stayed his hand. It was
Sowerby, leaning against the wall, pale and silent. During the
nocturnal staff meeting he had not spoken; a thin blood foam was
gathering at the corners of his mouth. He had received two lance
thrusts in the first shock of battle. Thinking them only flesh
wounds, he had kept fighting until he toppled from his horse from
loss of blood. Bandaged with one of General Miller's fine linen
shirts, he now insisted on standing, as if he wanted to meet his old
friend in fighting position. At last he spoke. He wanted to correct
the figures of the wounded and the dead; the casualty list named
seven officers killed. It was a mistake.

"It is eight/' said Sowerby.

With that he quietly slid to the floor, leaving a path of blood on
the wall to mark his fall.

Miller bent over him . . . Sowerby, who had fought under the
banners of Napoleon and survived the horrors of the retreat from
Moscow, now dying, in his twenty-ninth year, from a lance thrust
in a battle fought at the top of the world.

"Miller/* he whispered. "We have fought side by side. You are
my oldest and best friend. I am too feeble to say much. Write to
my mother and father and tell them I fell in a glorious cause.**

Manuela followed the van of victory three days later. The army
was far in advance, and even the dwindling walking commissary,
the cattle, was days ahead of her. She stopped at the battle-
ground of Junin just long enough to bury Colonel Sowerby at the
Indian church at Carahuamayo, and to put up the grave-marker
which General Miller had written. Then, moving southward, she
was lost again in the snow-topped mountains. Now Bolivar was
worried about her. They had lost all contact, until Santana ad-
dressed a letter which eventually caught up with her:

114 The Four Seasons of Manuela

Huanta, 28 August, 1824
MY DEABJEST FRIEND:

I have written many letters to you since I left Huarica. I must
tell you that although I have not seen your letter I know about
your halting-place, the state of your health and what has hap-
pened on your journey from the coast I am always the same and
conform to my eternal maxim of friendship. I am a hundred
leagues from you but very close by in the good friendship which
I have always offered you. Tell me where can I send my letter
safely, because I would never want you to accuse me of being
indifferent.

We are six leagues from Huamanga [Ayacucho] and tomorrow
we shall enter this second city of Peru. The Spaniards are fleeing,
we are pursuing them, and making them lose many men.

We shaU not see the coast for a long time, because the circum-
stances of the war will lead us as far as upper Peru. To destroy
the enemy before they can re-form their army is the principal ob-
ject which now occupies us.

The campaign had now become one of position. There were
skirmishes, retreats, advances. The suffering on both sides was
horrible, but the patriots suffered most, since they were in hostile
land. For five years the Viceroy had held this part of the moun-
tains; and the Indians, finding among his troops a continuous
market for their produce, favored the royalist side and were the
base of its army. The patriots were constantly being led into
ambush.

Once a company of patriots, trailing the enemy, were caught in
a snow-filled pass; within hours they were suffering from the
surwnpi, snow blindness. Tiny tubercles formed on their eyeballs,
the lids could not be closed except with excruciating pain; in two
days they were completely blind. Indians found them huddled
on the side of a precipice, and offered to lead them to safety. In
single file they fell in behind the guide, each man grasping the
poncho of the one ahead. In this way they slipped and slid down
the icy slopes into the plain. When they recovered their sight,
they were looking into the rifles of the godos, into whose hands the

The Step of Conquerors 115

Indians had delivered them. A volley at close range, and they
were made blind again. So went the war.

And Manuela waited.

She waited with all the impatience of a woman expecting her
lover. She had followed Simon Bolivar and his armies for a thou-
sand miles over one of the most terrifying landscapes in the world,
solely to be with him between battles. In the start, when she did
not have news of him, she would torture herself with imagining
that something had happened to him, but slowly she gained con-
fidence in his own belief that his glory would protect him. She
settled down in the little valley of Jauja, not too far from Bolivar's
headquarters, and waited. The earth was spinning around to
spring, which in this land now meant only rain. Rills swollen by
the heavy rains became raging rivers and overflowed their banks,
roads were turned into quagmires; the days began with rain,
ended in rain. Manuela could do nothing but gather in the gossip
that she heard from travelers, and listen to the rumors, which fell
about her like the incessant rain.

As Simon Bolivar had known, the victory of Junin ? that bloody
skirmish between two bodies of cavalry, had had an electrifying
effect in Peru. Those who had changed sides now wondered if the
royalists would win after all. Lima, occupied by the royalists, was
uneasy. The United States Consul, writing to the Secretary of
State, had expressed what most people were thinking:

Lima, August 24, 1824

On the 6th instant a combat took place between the patriots
and Spaniards which ended in the triumph of the former. ... It
appears that General Canterac * , * moved forward . . . and the
advanced divisions of both armies encountered each other and
after an obstinate combat, the Spanish force was worsted with
considerable loss. ... It augurs badly for them that they should
have been defeated. . * . In the contradictory and confident as-
sertions of both sides, it is difficult to get at the truth, but the as-
pect of affairs has essentially changed in favor of the patriots
within the last three months. The great exertions that have been

116 The Four Seasons of Manuela

made by the patriot government of Colombia and the energy and
ability of General Bolivar have brought forward an army filled
with enthusiasm. . . .

The Spanish general commanding in this district has removed
all the public property from the Mint and elsewhere to the Castles
of Callao; and the small garrison that remains in the City is ready
to evacuate it at a moment's warning. The Montonera have made
incursions in its immediate vicinity the last two days for the pur-
pose of pillage and the approach of some patriot force is now
daily expected.

And the consequences of Junin were being felt as far north as
the capital of Gran Colombia. Santander had received notices of
the victory. It meant something entirely different to him than to
others. So when night hung its blue veils over the narrow streets
of Bogota, he lay awake and thinking.

Manuela waited, and meanwhile she read. There was Belisario,
given to her by O'Connor; Tacitus, which O'Leary insisted that
she read if she would understand the nature of war; and then for
sheer pleasure she had the delectable adventures of Don Quixote,
a well-thumbed copy from Simon's library which he once carried in
Ins saddlebags. Reading, rain and rumors; so went Mamiela^s
private war. For weeks there was no word from Bolivar, until one
day a courier rode up and brought a water-stained message from
headquarters. It was from Juan Santana, dated from Huncayo on
October 24:

MY DEABEST FRIEND,

We have just arrived this moment. Here is a letter. The Colo-
nel urges me to write this note since the courier rides. Will we see
you tomorrow?

But even before she could think of a reply, a corps of cavalry
rode up, and there was Simon Bolivar.

Something seemed to come between them during their two
nights together. It was not that Manuela had lost anything of her
fascination for Bolivar, for neither time nor war had stripped her
of a particle of her demanding passions if anything, they had

The Step of Conquerors 117

multiplied them. But things were not as they had been. Simon
Bolivar was distraught when he arrived; soon he lapsed into
moody and inattentive silence. Finally, in a fury, he poured out
what had unnerved him. Manuela had been right. Something had
come between them, to mar their few hours of happiness. That
something was a someone, and his name was Santander: he had
had the Colombian Congress revoke the Enabling Act.

What did that mean? It meant that Santander for he was the
real "Congress" had been frightened about the victory of Junin.
He had believed, when Bolivar insisted on leading his troops to
Peru, that the Liberator would fall into a political swamp, and
return with his reputation worn thin whereupon he, Santander,
would emerge as the power, and the Republic as he envisioned
it would emerge. However, he had not counted on the hidden
strength of Bolivar. The raising and training of that army out
of chaos, the scaling of the Andes, the defeat of the legions of
Spain in the first test of battle, augured ill for Santander's plans.
If Simon Bolivar personally led the allied troops to final victory,
his prestige would be so tremendous that there would be no con-
taining him or his ambitions. So "Congress" had decreed that the
General must, "for political reasons/* give up active command of
the army. He was not to be permitted to lead it into battle.

Manuela insisted that Bolivar should disregard Congress, ride
out to war at the head of the army he had created. And to begin
with, he should order Santander hanged as a traitor. But Bolivar
would have none of this. There was too much talk already of his
being a dictator. If he should disregard Congress now, no matter
how justified, it might ruin his entire plan for America. He would
yield; the whole business made him sick at heart.

Then he informed General Sucre of his decision. At first the
whole staff threatened to resign. Sucre, on the point of tears, at first
refused to take command of the army unless Bolivar were there
himself to lead them to final victory. But at last Bolivar's views
prevailed. The fate of Peru, the final outcome of the long years of
straggle, ky in Sucre's hands. There remained only two final in-

118 The Pour Seasons of Manuela

structions: Sucre must find the right pkce in this upside-down
mountain world for a last battle, and he must be careful not to tire
out his troops by marching:

"Feet spared Peru, feet saved Peru, and feet will again cause
Peru to be lost. . . . Since we cannot fly like our enemies, we
must reserve our energies. . . . Sooner or later they will stop, and
we shall defeat them."

Then, with only a squadron of cavalry as escort, Simon Bolivar
was gone.

Manuela weeks later was already at the villa outside Lima, wait-
ing for him, when Bolivar arrived. He had taken an indirect route,
making a wide arc to the north to recruit more soldiers for Gen-
eral Sucre. As he neared the city, the mere word of his coming so
frightened the few royalist troops behind the walls that they
hurriedly flung open the gates, and with hundreds of turncoats
fled in dismay to the fortress at Callao. Bolivar reached Lima on
December 7th, 1824. "I have the honor to inform you," read a
report, "that General Bolivar entered this city today accompanied
with no other troops than a corps of cavalry "

Arriving in Lima, Bolivar became terribly distracted. He drank
more than his usual glass of wine, he was irritated by Manuela's
smoking, he fumed at the red-headed Jose; he paced up and down
the floors of the villa, his heels clicking on the tiles, dimming the
shrill chirp of the cicadas in the trees outside. His secretaries were
worn out from lack of sleep, and their nerves flailed from the
strain. Santana chewed the end of his goose quill until it was
feathered like a plume. All this because news had come through
that a battle was shaping up in the mountains. Bolivar, chafing at
his loss of the command, was dictating a battle plan to General
Sucre. Yet even as he was putting his signature to it, the battle
action had begun.

December the 8th was dawning clear and cold. Through the
night that preceded it, on the eleven-thousand-foot tableland over-

The Step of Conquerors 119

looking the ancient city of Ayacucho, the fires of the patriot troops
burned brightly. There was little sleep. Small groups of soldiers,
huddled in woolen ponchos, lazed about the fires which twinkled
in the cold night like myriads of stars. Some of the warriors were
sharpening their bayonets, others casting lead shot in bullet molds;
many just sat and stared blankly into the dancing flames. From far
off in the night came the sharp crack of rifle fire, and an occasion-
ally louder noise as the one remaining piece of artillery left to the
patriot encampment was fired into the shadows. A mile away on
top of a hulk of land, called Condorcanqui, the "Condor's Neck/'
lay the enemy.

For two months the armies had pursued and retreated from
each other, trying desperately to feint one another into an area for
positional warfare. The marches had played havoc with the
patriot army. More than half the men had been lost through illness
and desertion, all of their artillery was gone except a single
twenty-four-pounder with a broken caisson, and this had been
hauled up to the heights of Quinua. There was only enough food
for two days and there was now no means of withdrawal. To the
north and south were deep ravines, at their backs hundreds of
Indians only waited for the moment of retreat to fall on them.
Fronting them was the whole of the royalist army, more than nine
thousand men, a thousand of whom were mounted the famous
Spanish regiments of Burgos, Guias, Victoria, Gerona, Fernan-
dinas. The Viceroy too was there, and with him were his skteen
generals. There was no choice left the patriots, it was victory or it
was death.

In spite of being outnumbered two to one, the council of war
of the allied armies that night had decided to give battle. In an
Indian tut, from which the smoke of a fire found its way out
through the grass thatch as best it could, sat the staff of General
Sucre. As they deliberated they ate cheese, hard bread and scrap-
ings of brown sugar.

**We won't die of overeating/* said General La Mar, cutting a
piece from the sugar loaf.

120 The Four Seasons of Manuela

La Mar was in command of the Peruvian Legions. The oldest
general in the field, he had been born in Ecuador in 1777., and
educated in Spain, where he fought against Napoleon. Com-
missioned a general by the King of Spain, he had been sent to
Peru as military consultant to the Viceroy; but after the first
fighting of the revolution he sent in his resignation and offered his
person to his native land. Cordoba, the handsome sloe-eyed young
Colombian, a general at twenty-four, commanded the Colombian
contingent. Jacinto Lara, reserved and erect, generaled the re-
serves.

At dawn the royalists were breaking camp. The long lines of pale
blue uniforms could be seen descending from the heights to the
battlefield. The bulk of their forces deployed in line of battle at
the foot of cliffs, but one section moved down to the ravine on the
left flank, bringing along with them several pieces of artillery.
Scouts hurried back to report to Sucre that it was commanded by
the famous General Valdes.

Sucre knew all about Valdes. Violent, abrupt and overbearing,
he was feared by his officers and idolized by his men; although a
field marshal, he dressed in an odd uniform of his own devising
a broad-brimmed beaver hat, a coarse gray homespun surtout,
and long leggings. He performed the task of throat-cutting with
honor. Sucre was sure of that. He himself, riding hard through a
town to escape Valdes's pursuit, had once been struck by a rope
hurled from a window by an ardent royalist.

"Here, Sucre, you nigger half-breed, here's a rope to hang your-
self with/* said the lady; and she urged her slave to throw a
rock at him.

When General Valdes came into town she gloated over what
she had done. Valdes promptly put a noose around the slave's
neck.

"Madame," he said, "Sucre is as much a general as I am,
although we are fighting on different sides. What your slave did
to Sucre yesterday, he would do to me tomorrow. Sergeant! Hang
this man/*

The Step of Conquerors 121

As the enemy was organizing into formal position o attack, a
group of horsemen detached themselves from the mass and
galloped toward the patriot lines flying a white flag of truce.
General Monet, resplendent in a parade uniform emblazoned with
decorations, saluted the officers:

"Gentlemen, there are in your army, as in ours, officers fighting
on opposite sides who are joined by bonds of family or close
friendship. Would it be possible, before we knock each other's
blocks off, to chat a little and exchange farewells?"

While the knightly honors were going on, the royalist troops
slowly maneuvered into position. At eight o'clock the officers re-
turned to their own lines, and the patriots moved up to attack.
The royalists had already opened fire with their artillery, and can-
non balls were rolling down the field like bowling balls. Sucre, in a
tight blue frock coat with a row of gilt buttons, wore neither sash
nor medals. He took off his cocked hat festooned with white feath-
ers and made a brief speech only a dozen words, but unforget-
table:

"Soldiers, the fate of South America depends on how you fight
today."

The troops began to cross the half mile that separated them from
the enemy, whose long-range fire soon gave them trouble. Cor-
doba, at the head of the Colombians, called a halt; drawing a long
knife, he dismounted, approached his animal's head, and killed it
with a single well-aimed thrust.

"I want no horse to flee from this battle," he said.

Then, raising his wide-brimmed Panama hat on the tip of his
saber, he roared, "Forward! Arms at discretion."

A captain, already wounded by a spent bullet, shouted:

"What step, General?"

"What step? Why, the step of conquerors!^

The patriots rushed forward again, not even pausing in their
advance to take aim. From his fixed position the enemy poured a
withering fire into their ranks. Cannon balls rolled down on them,
carrying off heads and legs; shot from the rifles belched at close

122 The Four Seasons of Manuela

range into their lines. They wavered, fell back, recovered. Their
dead piled higher and higher. But they kept on, and drove a wedge
into the royalist center. Now onto the field came Miller, leading
his cavalry, and into the hole that had been punctured by the in-
fantry rode the saber-swinging guerrillas, cutting down the hal-
bardiers who defended the guns and trampling their broken bodies
into bloody pulp. The patriot foot soldiers swarmed over the guns
and turned them against the ranks of the enemy.

Now the battle tide turned with a rush: the royalist retreat be-
came a rout. Soldiers threw away their rifles and ran to the cliffs,
trying to climb to safety. Cannon balls splintered against the rock
walls, killing as many by flying stone fragments as by the shot and
shell. The cavalrymen hacked at them, and the infantry sat below
picking them off as if they were clay dummies in a shooting gallery*
The slaughter was awesome. It was no longer a battle, but a mom-
ing in a mountain abattoir. On the field, the royalists left fourteen
hundred men killed and seven hundred wounded. Those who
escaped the butchery to reach the heights were brought into a
semblance of formation, but their spirit was gone. Those who sur-
vived on the plain were soon captured among them the Viceroy,
La Serna, his gray hair matted with blood and his strength sapped
by a head wound. At the very moment La Serna was affixing his
signature to the articles of capitulation, his King in faraway Spain
was rewarding his past victories with the resounding title of
"Count of the Andes."

Within an hour the battle was over. It was one of the most de-
cisive engagements in world history, this battle in which the last
of the imperial armies in America was defeated.

All afternoon the prisoners came in; sixteen generals, sixteen
colonels, the whole residue of the army that had not been de-
stroyed. General Sucre went at once to his squalid headquarters,
and on an upturned brandy cask wrote to Bolivar of the victory
at Ayacucho. Two identical copies of the dispatch were made. One
was given to Manuela's friend, Colonel Medina, the other to Cap-
tain Alarcon; their orders, to ride like Pegasus over the fearful dis-

The Step of Conquerors 123

tances and reach Lima as soon as possible. Medina set out first.
He was just over the first hill when a well-directed rock hit him
on the head; he was knocked to the ground, and was instantly cut
to pieces by Indian scavengers. The diversion allowed Alarcon to
slip by, and down he went carrying the news to Lima.

They were alone that night in the villa. Simon Bolivar had been
unwell the whole day, coughing fitfully into his cambric handker-
chief. Wrapped in a large blue cape with embroidered high-stand-
ing scarlet collar, he rested his feet in the warmth of a bronze
brazier. His eyes were half closed as he listened to Manuela read-
ing to him in her soft Quito lisp. Outside, there was a scuffling
movement, a welling rise of sound, and shouts from the sentinels;
then a pounding at the door. Juan Santana burst in, bootless, but-
toning up his red jacket as he came forward. There was news, im-
portant news, a battle had been fought and Captain Alarcon
stumbled into the room. He had ridden from the battlefield of
Ayacucho in eight days, and he gave the General the dispatch.

Bolivar read it unbelievingly. For a moment, he stared before
him; then, waving the dispatch in his hand like one intoxicated, he
leaped over chairs, bounded onto a table with one jump, and
danced about shouting, ^Victory! Victory! Victory!"

8

THE THREE-CORNERED
AFFAIR

ANUELA had now her own private war to wage. For a time, with
the distractions of war absorbing her whole being, she had for-
gotten, or at least had given little thought to her personal conflict.
Now it was upon her; James Thome was on his way back to Lima.
Nothing could be hidden, nothing glossed over. Her husband al-
ready knew, for the letters that waited her return were proof of
the logomachy that would ensue, the moment he set foot in Lima.

Manuela could not dissimulate, she was incapable of it. She
wore her hates and her loves on her forehead for everyone to see,
yet now she faced a decision. She knew, for he had said so, that
he was coming back with all the prerogatives of her husband.
They lived, he pointed out, under rigid Catholic law. Divorce was
granted only in the most extreme of circumstances; husbands
could and many did shut their wives in convents when their
public conduct was disapproved by the bishop. A husband's rights
over property and children were absolute. Manuela was Thome's
heir; she held his power of attorney which she could use for his
ill or his good, depending on her caprice. Moreover it was Thome,
after all, who had to face the innuendoes that entered the conver-
sation every time the name of Bolivar was spoken.

Manuela had once said of matrimony, "Marriage pledges one to
nothing." Perhaps. But there were pledges to society, which in a
place such as Lima could not be easily broken.

The Three-Cornered Afair 125

Her marriage was actually one of the few conventional things
she had ever done, even though the bishop hurried it up so that
James Thome could "arrange his conscience." Still in 1817 he had
offered her all the things she most wanted security, position,
respectability; by marriage she at once '^belonged." And fiat was
after Panama.

When Manuela arrived in Panama in 1815 to be with her father
after her scandalous affair with Fausto in Quito, the entire isthmus
was in ferment. Spain had decided to put down the rebellion of
the American colonies and was sending a stream of men and mate-
rials across the isthmian jungles. Ships arrived constantly in the
Atlantic ports, and mule trains in a steady stream carried their
cargo over mountain trails to the city of Panama on the Pacific
side, to be reloaded and sent to destinations down the coast. There,
among the honeypots of business, Simon Saenz was trying to re-
coup his fortunes. Into this easy, undisciplined life Manuela
slipped, and there put the finishing touches to her education. She
aided her father in his work, for she had inherited his good head
for business and his inclination for money-making. She acquired
two personal slaves, learned to smoke which every woman, no
matter what her family position, seemed to do in Panama and
developed a taste for liquor. Moreover, tinder the spell of the
tropical luxuriance of the land, she discovered what was later
called "a secret charm to make herself adored." Not that she
needed any aphrodisiacal devices; her manner, her walk, her
movements aroused in most men only a desire to possess her. Be-
hind her father's counting tables, she must have seemed an allur-
ing nymph to the ships* captains who frequented the place.

So at least she appeared to one merchant who often called there
to transact business with Don Simdn. If his blue eyes and reserved
manner did not betray him as an Englishman, then his language
did; his Spanish, although grammatically correct, was flat and un-
musical. He had none of the persuasive tongue of the officers who
paid her insistent court, nor was poetry Ms metier; he could make
no pretty speeches to turn girls' heads, and so ripen them for the

126 The Four Seasons of Manuela

gentle fall. Still this Ingles was in love with Manuela Ms name
was James Thome.

James Thome the Spanish called him Don Jaime was a
paradox within a paradox. An Englishman who was a Roman
Catholic, living in Lima, when the English were proscribed and
excluded. He was a friend of the Viceroy, and a mystery to every-
one. . . . Thorne made his proposal to Simon Saenz; and in the
manner of the day the marriage was arranged, he was given eight
thousand golden pesos as dowry, and then the only remaining part
of the transaction was to inform Manuela.

One never knew about Manuela, particularly in a matter like
this proposal Thorne was more than twice her age; he was correct
she unconventional. He was an Anglo-Saxon; she was Latin. Yet
there were certain advantages to the marriage. She could instead
go abroad with her father, but this held no appeal; she was an
American, and all her emotions were ranged against Spain. Her
reputation had preceded her to Panama, and this virtually cut her
off from an advantageous marriage. The only alternative would
be to remain on the isthmus and become the mistress of some well-
placed man, with the possibilities of a slow drift into prostitution.

So the marriage was arranged. Simon Saenz gave his blessings
to the union and left for Spain. James Thorne filled his coffers with
the eight thousand golden pesos and sailed with his Manuela for
Lima. There they took up residence in different houses in the
parish of San Sebastian, to fulfill the laws of the city that one had
to be married from the place of residence.

San Sebastian, founded in 1561, was one of the oldest of the
parishes of Lima. Bounded by the noisy, turbulent Rimac River,
which cascaded down from the Andes, its limits ended two blocks
from the heart of the city. It was noted then for the quality of its
citizens; there were numerous titled Limenos in residence. The
Counts of Casa Boza occupied the most imposing of the houses,
the Count of Fuerte Gonzalez had his mansion on the Street of the
Palms. Close by was the famous sixteenth-century pharmacy "At
the Sign of the Six Palms," to which all Lima's doctors made their

The Three-Cornered 127

way, since it had the reputation of never adulterating the medi-
cines. The rakes also knew the "Sign of the Six Palms/' for there
they got certain elixirs of love. San Sebastian was doubtless a dis-
trict of consequence.

James Thome had been invited to spend the days preceding
the marriage at the home of Domingo Orue, now in business with
him. Manuela, disdaining her distant relatives the Saenz y Tejadas,
went to stay at the home of Don Toribio Aceval, secretary to the
Viceroy. He was a friend of Manuela's father, had been knighted
in the Military Order of Calatrava, and owned a coach which
only the most noble possessed and which gives more index to his
importance than any name or rank.

On July 22, 1817, Manuela, in black veil, flowing skirt and satin
ballet slippers, went with James Thome to the Archbishop's Palace
for their premarital examination. There was much about Thome
that Manuela did not yet know. He had never told her his exact
age, although she fudged that it must be at least twice her own.
He never explained why he, an Englishman, was allowed to live
in Lima when most of his countrymen were excluded, nor had he
ever said how he had arrived in America. He already had excel-
lent connections; he could gain an audience with the Viceroy
when he wished it; he was friendly with many well-placed Span-
iards, and Ms business as a factor and merchant-ship owner was
far flung. Here, as witness to their marriage, was Leon de Alto-
aguirre, principal accountant to the King's Treasury. How had
James Thome, Englishman, managed to plunge ahead so quickly
in the closed society of Lima? She thought that she would learn
the answers to such questions from his replies to the Vicar-Gen-
eral. But his age he did not give; he merely said that he was over
twenty-five years old. He had been born in the village of Aylesbury
(the Spanish notary wrote it Ayleburis) in Buckinghamshire, a
county that was full of Thornes, "villeins in breed and tenure/*

There was one thing Manuela did discover about him. One of
Ms witnesses testified, "I arrived from Cadiz with James Thome in
1812 as a prisoner/* Why was he a prisoner? And of whom? Had

128 The Four Seasons of Manuela

he been arrested while doing business in Spain during the Peninsu-
lar Wars, and sent in one of the galleys to the New World? If so,
then how had he managed to extricate himself from this predica-
ment, make his way to Lima, set himself up in business, and within
five years become so prosperous that he could command as witness
to his marriage no less a personage than an official of the Viceroy's
suite? It was an unanswered question. She never found out either
his age or what had happened to him in Cadiz.

On the night of July 27 they were married at the Church of San
Sebastian. Manuela, "veiled and anointed,'* gave her marriage
vows to James Thorne; the knight, Don Toribio Aceval, stood as
her sponsor, as he had promised her father, and gave the bride
away. They exchanged their vows; and as they were both Catho-
lics, it was presumably for all eternity.

The marriage at first worked out well. Despite the vacuity of
his love, Manuela was helpful to him; she kept her eyes open, she
had a sense of the drift of things, and her opinion was extremely
shrewd. In entertaining the sea captains who came to their table,
she learned English, turning her Spanish thoughts easily enough
into piquant if not always grammatical terms. For a time she was
amazed at how she settled down to being "Mrs. Thorne." Then
came the irritants. Thorne was wholly unsatisfying to her. He ap-
proached her without art or imagination, and once in an argument
she flung at him, "As a husband you are clumsy. You love without
pleasure. Believe me, the monotonous life is reserved for your
nation."

Then, as early as 1819, the revolutionary movement became
activated. Manuela took an active part in it, endangering both
their lives and his business. There was constant argument over
this, and over her two slaves with their penchant for dressing in
men's clothing. Thorne disliked them and their intimacy with
Manuela. It seemed to him that every time he wished to see her
they were present; they hung about like the shadows of her soul.
Thus the discords in their marriage increased with the cacophony
of war.

The Three-Cornered Affair 129

Now in this year of victory, 1825, the time for decision had ar-
rived. She had been away from her husband for many months,
first in Quito, then for almost a year riding the frigid puna in the
Liberator's circle. In all that time, she had given little thought to
her lawful spouse or her marital obligations. But this was Lima,
where Thome's friends and interests were centered, where all her
movements were known and where he himself might return at
almost any time. What about the future? What should be her next
step?

Simon Bolivar, absorbed in his grandiose dreams of America,
had given her no encouragement to believe that he would some
day offer her marriage; he could be, when he wished, terribly im-
personal and devious. James Thome had told her that she and
Bolivar could not be united under the rules of honor which
meant, of course, that he would not consent to a divorce even if
It could be arranged. Should she then insist on a final break on
Thome's return?

Manuela did not believe it wrong to have given herself to Simon
Bolivar; there was a doubt if it was more wrong than living what
was at best only a fragmentary marriage. Still she did not approve
of looseness, she never had casual liaisons no matter what the
scandalmongers said of her affairs, they always sprang from real
passion. Love was the touchstone in matters of this sort, love alone
the justification. She did not question at all her right to be the
mistress of Simon Bolivar. The conflict sprang, at least within her,
from no moral issue: it would be merely inconvenient.

Inconvenient. And difficult For no one could make decisions in
Lima now. Manuela was not alone in her search for an answer to
personal problems. The very air was tremulous with short tempers,
and for good reason. Victory had not brought victory, and the
wa/s end did not end the war. The fortress of Callao still held out
under siege.

Everyone had expected the Spanish General Rodil to be reason-
able. But then war is often illogical; so Jose Ramon Rodil, com-
mandant o the fortress that guarded the approaches to Callao,

130 The Four Seasons of Manuela

would not let go. He was offered generous terms. His garrison
would be given all the honors of war, and amnesty was offered to
most of the four thousand royalists who had taken refuge in the
fort. Bolivar wanted to end the war and get on with his plans of
reorganizing the Americas, so his terms were magnanimous. Rodil
could see for himself for all he needed was to mount the ram-
parts with a telescope to note that Bolivar was keeping to the
terms of the peace treaty. All captured Spanish officers were being
repatriated and going onto the decks of the frigates in full range
of the guns of the fortress. General Rodil responded to the peace
offer with savage indifference. The patriots got back their first
courier with the offer of peace pinioned to him by a knife; another
was tossed into the sea.

Bolivar reacted vigorously to the challenge. Four thousand
troops invested the fortress; siege guns were brought off their
ships; the battle of attrition began. The fortress had never been
taken by storm. One side of the castle rested in the sea, great stone
walls lashed by the unquiet Pacific; the other sides were protected
by a moat and high walls. A huge gate with a drawbridge was the
only entrance. Supplies were smuggled in to the beleaguered gar-
rison by those who had the stomach to run risks for payment in
Spanish silver.

The siege went on day and night. Although seven miles way,
the guns sounded in Lima as if an unlocked door was slamming
in the wind. At first the siege about Lima lent a spice of excite-
ment, but then as casualties mounted and the wounded soldiers
began to come back, and the incessant firing went on, the tempers
of everyone grew taut Don Basilio, the septuagenarian night
watch, who for fifty years had made his nocturnal cry, "Ave Maria,
all is serene," one night threw his lantern at the head of a priest;
the next morning he was found sitting naked in the fountain at the
Plaza de Armas. It was "the siege." Robbery increased, masses
were well attended, hens stopped laying all of this was "the
siege.'* But it was only when the verdugo, the public hangman,
pushed aside the man he was supposed to hang, slipped the noose

The Three-Cornered 131

over his own head and flung himself from the gibbet, that officials
recognized the seriousness of the public neurosis. Festivals were
arranged to distract the people; bullfighting, which had been cur-
tailed because there was a scarcity of fighting bulls, was resumed;
cockfighting was again permitted; and the Old Comedy Theater,
where once the famous La Perricholi strode the boards, was open
again to the buffoonery of strolling players. And a sumptuous vic-
tory ball was arranged in honor of General Simon Bolivar.

But on that very Friday of January 28, in a night as clear as day,
Bernardo Monteagudo was murdered. He was discovered lying
in the street near the Plazuela of San Juan, stabbed in the back.
Many people saw him lying there and passed by, thinking him
only some gentleman who had drunk too much pisco. Then some-
one turned the body over, and found himself staring into the fixed
open eyes of the whilom Minister of State. Everything marked his
opulence: the signet ring on his finger, the golden watch with the
golden chain and nugget, the diamond-studded buttons on the
linen shirt front. The news spread quickly. Some citizens wanted
to charge his death to the nerves of "the siege," but it was obvious
to most that its origin sprang from something else. More, this mur-
der was to have serious consequences.

Bolivar was called away from the Victory Ball, the Minister of
War was summoned, and within an hour every man with the repu-
tation of being a cutthroat was thrown into jail. Bolivar was in a
fury, first that anyone should have the nerve to attack a man so
close to his person, and then that this death had robbed him of
one who shared his vision of the Americas. Monteagudo had been
working on the program of the great Panama Congress of Ameri-
can Nations, and was to have been the chief delegate; his death
created a vacancy that could not be easily filled. So It was a re-
mark by one of the aristocrats of Lima, overheard by one of the
secret police, that gave the murder a political cast; 'Whoever
lolled Monteagudo deserves a prize for putting away a pestiferous
enemy of peace and liberty/*

Bolivar had not forgotten that the murdered Monteagudo had

132 The Four Seasons of Manuela

a regiment of enemies among the aristocracy. The first suspects
flushed out proved to be the freed slaves of the Count de San
Isidro, one of the distinguished patriots of Lima. Although the
Count insisted that he had no connection with the murder, he had,
unfortunately for himself, publicly denounced Monteagudo. De-
spite this, most believed in his innocence, and even the United
States Consul reported, "The assassination of Monteagudo seems
to have been an isolated crime unconnected with any conspiracy
and owing undoubtedly to the hatred which was felt for him by
the people of Lima."

Bolivar, however, was certain of a conspiracy, and for the first
time he used his dictatorial powers ruthlessly. He seized the per-
sonal papers of those who had been implicated, and at the slightest
resistance to law he clapped several of the well-born gentlemen
into jail and held them incommunicado. The first weeks of Febru-
ary 1825 were taken up completely by the investigation. Bolivar
hung onto the processing of the crime with the same tenacious
spirit with which he had pursued the godos across the Andes. At
last, after a fortnight of supreme assiduity, the police finally ex-
tracted from three rakehells a full confession. It was simple rob-
bery after all. They had seen the well-dressed Don Bernardo walk-
ing in front of the Church of San Juan, the moonlight flashing on
his diamonds he was, it appeared, accustomed to visit a married
woman in that neighborhood, a senora who lived in the first house
on the Street of Bethlehem. They confronted him, trying to seize
some of his diamond shirt studs. He resisted. One of the thieves
tried to fire his pistol, but it flashed in the pan; then another
stabbed him in the back. If there was an indication of a conspiracy
against Bolivar, the police had not been able to worm it out of the
prisoners. They were led off to the gallows, and the imprisoned
gentlemen were released.

But Taffaire Monteagudo left deep scars. After that, although
Bolivar was always revered in public, behind his back a caterwaul-
ing chorus of resentment was taking form.

The siege went on. Day upon day, night upon night, the dull

The Three-Cornered Affair 183

thump of exploding cannons drifted back to Lima. An assault on
the fort was ordered, but it was repulsed with terrible carnage.
Again there was an offer of honorable surrender, and again it was
pushed aside by Rodil. The siege lines were tightened. And death
began to stalk within the fortress. Every night the besieged low-
ered their dead into the sea; hundreds of bodies drifted up on the
shores, and long lines of weeping relatives walked the waterfront
to identify their kin. Of the four thousand royalist sympathizers
who had taken refuge there,, hundreds died in the first months,
including the Marquis de Torre Tagle.

The siege wore on endlessly, and nerves in Lima stretched. Peo-
ple developed nervous tics; every time a cannon went off, their
shoulders jerked in spasms, and it soon appeared that the whole
city was afflicted with St. Vitus's dance. Even Simon Bolivar did
not escape. At the villa, the country house of the Viceroy in tree-
embowered Magdalena, he was preparing an "account of Ms
deeds" for the Peruvian Congress. The noise bothered him, the
atmosphere upset him, at times he grew abusive to his secretaries,
and Juan Santana often emerged from a day's dictation completely
worn out by the Liberators temper. And there were quarrels with
Manuela. Her smoking bothered him (no one else was ever al-
lowed to smoke in his presence) and she was becoming entirely
too possessive. He was naturally besieged by women, and adored
by a constantly widening circle of amorously dressed ladies who
directed upon him luminous glances. This infuriated Manuela.
There was many a scene between them at the villa; for she was
an animal when aroused, and the merest hint of replacement
awoke all her untamable pride.

One night [the story ran] she went to the villa when she was
not expected. And what did she find in Bolivar's bed, but a mag-
nificent diamond earring.

There was then an indescribable scene: Manuelita, furious,
wanted to tear out the Liberator's eyes. She was then a vigorous
woman. She attacked her unfaithful lover so savagely that the un-
fortunate great man was obliged to cry out for help. Two aides-

134 The Four Seasons of Manuela

de-camp had all the trouble in the world to rid him of this tigress.
As for Bolivar, he never ceased saying to her: "Manuelita, you
are bewildered, bewildered."

Manuela's nails "very pretty nails" made such scratches on
Bolivar's face that he had to remain in his room for eight days.
The official story said it was the grippe "the General has a heavy
cold." But during those eight days the scratched one received the
most zealous and touching care from his dear little cat.

A week later, his "grippe" cured and his scratched face healed,
General Bolivar appeared before the Peruvian Congress to give
full account of his deeds.

They were the deeds of a new Iliad. He arrived in Lima, he re-
called to them, when It was torn by civil war. Then a huge royalist
army was poised in the mountains back of the capital, threatening
to push the patriot forces into the sea. He had put down the f ac-
tionalists, and even with Lima in enemy hands he had raised an
army, equipped it and then marched it across the Andes. Eventu-
ally, as they all knew, the whole of the royalist force was defeated
at the Battle of Ayacucho. His work therefore was ended in Peru
... lie would resign his dictatorship. Immediately all the dele-
gates sprang to their feet, and in one voice urged him to continue
in power. Bolivar, in his dress uniform, with a single medal, stood
dramatically before them, drinking in the scene. Then, with a
gracious bow of acquiescence, he agreed to remain until the politi-
cal reforms that he felt necessary to the establishment of a demo-
cratic order in Peru were carried out. Even the United States
Consul, who attended these sessions, observed that "the Congress
Lave wisely continued the political power in the hands of General
Bolivar for another year, which appears indispensable for the
safety of Pera."

So Congress broke up, having delegated its powers to Bolivar,
but not before they voted him a million pesos which he refused
to accept So instead they made elaborate plans for monuments to
be erected to his glory, and ordered medals to be struck off In
celebration of the victory over the Spanish.

The Three-Cornered Affair 135

Naturally Simon Bolivar had to explain his equivocal position
to his Vice-President, Santander. How could he be President of
Gran Colombia and, at the same time, Dictator of Peru?

Here they compare me with Mercury's staff which had the
power to link In friendship all the serpents which might have de-
voured each other. Nobody gets along with anybody, but every-
one gets along with me.

As for his strange dual role of President and Dictator, he ex-
plained, "Every day I become more convinced that it is necessary
to give our life a foundation of security."

The diplomatic rewards of Bolivar's victories were already be-
ing prepared in Europe. He had grown to statesmanlike propor-
tions, and those in the councils who had before regarded him as
merely an intelligent leader of a band of guerrillas now were ex-
travagant in their praise of him, and proposed diplomatic missions.
In North America, by January, 1825, the United States at long last
gave recognition to the new republics created by Bolivar, and dis-
patched the frigate United States to Peruvian waters. When the
battle-scarred warship dropped anchor, the Liberator was invited
aboard for an official dinner.

Commodore Isaac Hull was in command. He was a gruff old
sea dog, a hero of the War of 1812, famous enough to have been
painted by Gilbert Stuart, and diplomat enough to have been se-
lected for the Peruvian mission. He had suggested that General
Bolivar set his own date for the dinner; and thus on February 22
Bolivar with his English-speaking staff was piped aboard the
United States without Manuela, for this was an occasion of
state. The ship's log:

On the 22nd, the Liberator partook of a collation on board the
frigate United States; he selected the day himself as being George
Washington's birthday. The Americans present took the oppor-
tunity to echo the voice of their country as they had done in the
reception to General La Fayette. General Bolivar afterwards rose,
gave La Fayette a toast, and made a very complimentary speeck

186 The Four Seasons of Manuela

Yet his most particular flourishes he saved for the young lady
at the end of the table. Her face was interesting eyes dark and
inquisitive, brown hair arranged in ringlets dropping down to her
bare shoulders. She was dressed in a Regency gown, laced high
under a revealing bosom; she wore the fashionable satin ballet
slippers. Bolivar had watched the way she fingered her wine glass,
and appraised her face and figure. When they met she came for-
ward, curtsied, and in perfect French presented herself: "Jeannette
Hart of Saybrook, Connecticut, Your Excellency's obedient serv-
ant."

She was the daughter of Captain Elisha Hart, whose ships sailed
from Saybrook to the East Indies, and she had been born in 1794
in that village on the Boston Post Road. As the mission of the
United States was diplomatic, Jeannette had been invited to join
her sister and her brother-in-law Commodore Hull. She was fresh
and eager, she spoke a beautiful French, to Bolivar's obvious de-
light, and her full wistful eyes were luminous with admiration for
the great man.

A few days later she returned his visit ashore; and afterwards,
stirred by the outpouring of his romantic speech, she wrote him a
letter in poetic form. Bolivar answered in French:

I would like, mademoiselle, to be able to answer you in a lan-
guage worthy of the Muses, and worthy of you, but I am, alas,
only a soldier. I must thus speak to you in military French. Your
charming verses are so flattering to me that I do not hesitate to
find them more sweet than the divine song of the lyre of Orpheus.
O wonder! A young beauty singing of a warrior. It is too much,
mademoiselle. Your kindnesses precipitate me to humility. Only
gratitude saves me from annihilation and gives me speech to inter-
pret my admiration and my attachment to you.

How deeply attached? He gave her a miniature of himself, and
this she preserved, with a few faded letters, all the rest of her life.
She never married. And to the horror of her Puritan family, she
joined the Catholic Church.

When this light romance came to Manuela's ears, she did not

The Three-Cornered Affair 137

pause to wonder whether it was serious, or just Bolivar the poet,
again composing in human flesh. She merely decided to stop it,
Her chance came at a formal ball given in honor of the officers of
the United States.

It was a gala affair, and Simon Bolivar was in high spirits. Again
he was paying extravagant court to Jeannette Hart. So, during a
pause in the dancing, Manuela bore down on her.

"How long do you intend to be here?" she asked.

"I do not know."

"It would be better if you departed soon and meanwhile
much better if you associated with your own countrymen, or with
the English."

Jeannette, affronted by this, responded, "And who are you, to
give me such advice without having been asked?"

"I/ 7 replied Manuela, "I am La Saenz."

It was now April, and die moment that Manuela had dreaded
most: she was to part from Bolivar. The mere thought of it had so
distracted her that for days she had scarcely noticed the intense
activity about the villa. A detachment of newly uniformed cavalry
had arrived, several riding horses had been brought out for Boli-
var's inspection, most of the staff were packing their dress uni-
forms. Jose Palacios, Boliva/s old servant, was readying the bas-
kets in which his two mastiffs would go on the journey with him.
Preparations were nearing completion for the Liberator's expedi-
tion, for Simon Bolivar was to make a visit of state into Upper
Peru.

At first Manuela insisted on accompanying him, and there was
the usual storm. But soon it was obvious that on this occasion
Manuela was not to have her way. General Jacinto Lara was ada-
mant on the subject. He had told Bolivar this before now he said
it again with greater emphasis. Manuela must go. In this critical
period of his career, with the future of Peru and Colombia in the
balance, with everything for which he and thousands of others
had sacrificed so much to foe gained, the Liberator could not allow

138 The Four Seasons of Manuela

a scandal, such as attended Ms love affair with Manuelita, to dis-
rupt his plans. Did Bolivar know what people were saying that
he had ordered her husband, James Thome, from Peru, not to re-
turn except under pain of official displeasure?

Yes, Bolivar knew it. It made him fearfully unhappy that he
had placed Manuelita in so equivocal a position. She had grown
so necessary to him, but events now made impossible a continua-
tion of their relationship. It was a hard decision for them both,
but by that April day when Bolivar was ready to begin his thou-
sand-mile tour of inspection, he had made his decision. They must
part.

Then Bolivar was gone.

Juan Santana kept his word. When he tearfully embraced Manu-
ela, he promised that he would keep her fully informed about the
General. Within four days she had the first letter:

Mataratones, April 14, 1825
MY DEAR FRIEND:

Yesterday afternoon we arrived at the hacienda Mataratones
after a long and arduous journey. Is it not utterly wonderful that
we are still crossing deserts, mounting stupid beasts, and arriving
now at Mataratones? ["Rat-killers."] And all this after leaving a
beautiful capital where they speak more French than in Paris,
leaving behind such inestimable friends. All of us are well and
day after tomorrow we shall be in Pisco and next in lea. There we
shall rest and later continue to Arequipa.

The post is leaving and I close my letter. Greet everyone at
your house and believe me your good friend,

SANTANA

Three days later Manuela rode out in her own calesa to meet
her husband. It would have been even in normal times a difficult
situation. And to Manuela, swept back and forth by passion, her
interest chilled by years of separation, the meeting with her hus-
band was not easy. Love for Bolivar was deep in her soul and it
was not to be damped out at once by the mere "rights'* of marriage.

James Thome was patient. Too patient, Manuela must have

The Three-Cornered Affair 139

thought, for it is good at times to be in a passion. It was all very
well for him to display those distinctive qualities of the English-
man: dignity, serenity, reticence. But in this Latin world, where
every human act was parabolic, only a violent response to pain
or pleasure was real: all else was folderol.

James Thome, however, scarcely would think of himself in such
a light. He wanted a complete Manuela body and soul, and despite
the differences in their ages he was passionately bound to her. He
was willing to forget her love affair with Bolivar, to swallow his
pride, and to act is if, like a man of the world, he did not care if
his pond had been fished in by another man. But he wanted Manu-
ela completely. He disliked her fierce independence. He feared her
inner life, those varied impulses of her flesh and her spirit that
made her something apart from him. This passionate, sensuous
Manuela, whom he could not fully possess, gave a pathological
twist to his jealousy and filled his mind with odious imaginings.

And yet at first he suppressed all this on the condition that
Manuela end her love affair with Bolivar abruptly, never mention
it, and permit no welling up of the juices of resentment. But how
could Manuela do it? How could she, with a turn of the screw,
dislodge one such as Bolivar from her thoughts? Everything here,
everything in her world, was part of him. When she went riding
with her husband in an open calesa, she could see the passing
women observing them, exchanging glances, the single eyes framed
by the saya and mania vibrant with understanding.

Yet apart from this, time and circumstances had done well by
James Thome. Now approaching fifty years of age, stocky, blue-
eyed and precise, and decidedly a man of importance, he relaxed
a little in the choice of his clothes, His high-collared frock coat
was tibe latest bleu celeste, made fashionable by Beau BrammeU
and his cambric waistcoats were impeccable in their patterns. The
wars too had been land to Mm. At first his ships had carried for
both factions, royalists or patriots, the elements of war. Now that
the wars had ended except for that interminable siege at Callao
they were carrying materials to reconstruct the rained cities.

140 The Four Seasons of Manuela

With his shipping business, his factories, his great haciendas, his
villa outside the walls of Lima, his mansion in the parish of San
Sebastian, life would have been complete if only he could have
one thing he could not control . . . Manuela.

The art of reconciliation was not something at which Manuela
was adept. She did not know compromise. The duties that mar-
riage imposed upon her she did mechanically. She would not let
her slaves go; in fact, they became her one link to the past she had
known, for these faithful Negro women these "mirrors of Manu-
ela" had shared all her joys and her sorrows throughout those
eventful years. Thome did not like them. It did not matter; they
remained. Perhaps if times had been normal . . .

But they were not. The siege went on day and night, night and
day. The patriot army investing the fortress was suffering from
the constant exposure.* for in these spring months the opaque
garua, the thin eternal mist, fell on them, chilling them to the bone
marrow. There were epidemics of yellow fever and then smallpox;
the hospitals were filled with the dying and the unburied. And
always, there was the incessant jarring sound of the cannons.

Then one day Manuela had a letter from Bolivar " and in his
own hand. It had been written from the town of lea, on the north
desert coast:

MY BEAUTIFUL AND ADORABLE MANUELA,

Each moment I am thinking of you and the fate which has
touched you. I see that nothing can unite us under the auspices
of innocence and honor. I see well, and deplore, the horrible situ-
ation for you. You must be reconciled with one you do not love
and I must be separated from one I adore. Yes, I adore you, today
more than ever before. Tearing myself from you and your love
has multiplied in me all the sentiments which bound me to your
heart, your soul and heart, that heart without equal.

When you were mine, I loved you more for your enchanting
nature than for the delicious attraction of your body. Now it
seems to me that an eternity separates us. In the future you will
be only at the side of your husband; I will be alone in the midst
of the world. . . . Only the glory of having conquered ourselves
will be our consolation!

The Three-Cornered Afair 141

It was a beautiful letter, but what did it mean "Only the glory
o having conquered ourselves will be our consolation'? There
was a ring of finality in it, even though the letter had been couched
in the most tender of tones. And then, at the very moment that
Manuela was making an effort to be "at the side of her husband/"
Jonotas brought her a note from Colonel O'Leary. It was short and
full of meaning: "Samuel Robinson has arrived."

Manuela felt that she had known "Samuel Robinson" all her life.
Under his true name of Simon Rodriguez, he had been Simon
Bolivar's beloved master, and she had heard much of this learned
Bohemian with whom the young Bolivar had traveled in Italy and
in France. On a hot August afternoon in 1805 they had climbed
Monte Sacro, overlooking Rome., and in the chrome-yellow light
of a sunset had looked down on the Eternal City at their feet. They
had been speaking of liberty, of revolt, of the history of Rome
with its tyrants and its Caesars. Then, with tears in his eyes,
Simon got to his feet and faced Rodriguez:

"I swear before you, I swear by the God of my father and
mother, I shall not give respite to my arm nor rest to my soul till
I have broken the chains which oppress us by the will of Spanish
power/* That day with the man who later took his sobriquet from
The Swiss Family Robinson was a well-remembered moment in
Bolivar's life.

How Manuela had laughed and wept over this teacher's foibles;
born in Caracas, he had been sired out of wedlock by one Carreno,
but he took the name of his mother and became Simon Rodriguez.
Dabbling in revolution while a priest, he was caught up, tried and
exiled. After that he lived by Ms wits. He had some of the attri-
butes of genius. He had a prodigious memory for names ( although
he frequently changed his own ), a gift for languages, a droll man-
ner, and an inventive mind. But he was beautifully inept, and com-
pletely unable to turn anything of this to advantage. He became
a translator in Jamaica, a typesetter in Baltimore, a tutor in Paris,
a circus performer in Russia, a candlemaker in Germany, and a
bookseller in London. Employed in the claque at Covent Garden,

142 The Four of

he could applaud like ten. Although a rake and a hellbender, he
kept his innocence, and women adored him. He had read all the
French Encyclopedists, devoured Spinoza and Holbach, and wor-
shiped the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He wanted to
live like the "natural man," and had with enthusiasm read Emile
aloud under the trees to the fifteen-year-old BoMvar. He believed
with Jean- Jacques that men are born innocent and that society
alone corrupts them, so he set off in this realm of incoherence to
follow Rousseau's precepts. He developed the "ambulatory ma-
nia/' just as it was suggested by the master. When Bolivar was
in Paris, at the impressionable age of nineteen, he met Simon
Rodriguez again, and together they traveled to Italy. Of him
Bolivar said, "Rodriguez formed in my heart the ideas of liberty,
justice, greatness and beauty /*

Yet they had lost track of each other for many eventful years,
until one day, while Bolivar was recovering from an illness, he
heard that Simon Rodriguez had returned to Bogota. Immediately
he sent an urgent message: "Oh! My teacher, my friend, my Rob-
inson, you are in Colombia and you have not told me/* And he
urged Rodriguez to come to Peru, for "instead of a mistress, I am
in need of a philosopher. For the present I prefer Socrates to
Aspasia." Bolivar provided the money for the trip ("This man
might become very useful to me"), and soon after he had left for
Upper Peru, Rodriguez arrived in Lima.

Mr. Robinson [said a Frenchman recalling Mml was the pseu-
donym of an original type; lie was first known as Father Antonio,
a Franciscan monk of Caracas, who was Bolivar's teacher. One
fine day in January 1824 Robinson appeared suddenly in Bogota
in search of his old pupil, who, unfortunately for him, was in
Lima*

Robinson, getting on toward sixty, had a young wife, a very
nice girl and a good laundress, whom he had married in Paris. She
had brought back from Europe a small alembic to make table
liqueurs which she peddled. This gave me the occasion to meet
her and her husband, a man still in the green of manhood, with a
spiritual face, a worn black suit, indicating a state of semi-poverty.

The Three-Cornered Affair 143

He . . . possessed a high degree of learning; he had lived in
France, England, Russia, and was a master of languages. . . .
There was certainly some disequilibrium about Ms personal-
ity ... that caused this poverty. Yet he spoke well on all sub-
jects, and he had concerned himself with the applications of the
sciences to industry. . . . Robinson left for Lima with his wife
and her alembic; unfortunately the Parisian chippy contracted the
fever while descending the Magdalena and succumbed in Car-
tagena.

Such, was the "natural man" who dismounted at the villa in
Magdalena, not knowing what sort of reception he would have.
He was surprised out of his wits at the welcoming. He was a small
man with twinkling eyes, and several majestic chins falling over
a soiled neckpiece. His face was open and disarming with a fresh,
pink glow like a baby's bottom, and his hair was gray and curled
around the ears, giving it the look of a freshly crimped and
powdered wig; and his generous nose with its network of fila-
ments had a purplish tint, put there by the wines of Burgundy to
which lie was addicted. Manuela and Simon Rodriguez were in-
stantly drawn to each other. Apart from their natural sympathies,
they both loved Simon Bolivar. Rodriguez was installed at the villa
and acquired, despite his threescore years, a nice mistress the
color of cafe au lait. He was gentle, gay, learned a little mad
perhaps, but as enthusiastic about knowledge as when he had
first turned the leaves of Rousseau's books. Living had been dif-
ficult at times, and he once said to Manuela in a rare moment of
melancholy, *% who wanted to make the world into a paradise
for all, have made it into a Hell for myself.'*

By the orders of Bolivar, he was to become Director and In-
spector General of Public Instruction in the new republic called
Bolivia. So he was presently off again, mounted with obvious
effort on an outsized mule. With his books and instruments on one
pack beast, his mistress on another, and a packet of letters from
Manuela to Bolivar in his pocket, he set off like Don Quixote to tilt
with the windmills of the Liberator's America. Director of public
education in a land he had never known, carrying advanced

144 The Four Seasons of Manuela

European ideas of teaching to a people mostly unlettered, office-
holder at sixty In a treeless windswept world three miles above the
level of the sea, public instructor to a land that he had left forty
years before as Manuela watched him go off into the coastal
desert, she must have wondered at the wisdom of Simon Bolivar
In this. Poor Rodriguez, he would provide the only comic relief
to the universal carnage in the months to come.

The siege of Callao continues . . . General Rodil has not 900
effective men, and misery and dissatisfaction are daily increasing
in Callao, and the mortality is very considerable. How long he
may hold out is uncertain. His vigilance is incessant, and he exerts
all the talents of an able commander.

So wTOte the United States Consul to Henry Clay, and weeks
later he added:

General Rodil still holds out in the castles of Callao. His situa-
tion becomes every day more critical. He has lately shot . . .
three or four in close arrest; this danger of disaffection is more
imminent than even famine or the cannon balls of the besiegers.

And still the guns thundered. No longer was the sun the arbiter
of the life movements of Lima. The siege guns marked the day's
hours; their first salvo became the diana, their cessation the
vespers. Everything was geared to them. And the specter of death
continued to stalk within the fortress. The defenders ate their
mules, then rats, and then each other; the four thousand refugees
were reduced to less than a thousand. The beaches of Callao be-
came noisome with the unburied bodies, and over them slack-
winged vultures darkened the skies. Only the coffinmakers seemed
to gain anything from all of this. There was a constant flow of
funeral corteges through the streets; the tolling of church bells
and masses for the dead went on twenty hours a day.

By now James Thome at last had lost his patience. He was, in
turn, pleading and insistent with Manuela, then violent, contrite,
threatening. He knew that despite his vigilance she was carrying
on a correspondence with Bolivar, and somehow getting letters

The Three-Cornered Affair 145

in reply. He began to feel that, as long as the harassing shadow of
the Liberator was between him and Manuela, he could not win.

He suggested a trip to London. Manuela wrote Bolivar about it,
for thus she might test the finality of the separation implied in his
letters. From the top of the world, from Bolivia, came his answer:

DARLING, MY ADORED ONE:

Your answer is not clear about that terrible trip to London. Is
this possible, my darling? Don't give me mysterious riddles to
solve. Tell the truth, that you don't want to go anywhere. Answer
what I recently asked you, so that I know your intentions defi-
nitely and surely. You want to see me ... at least with your own
eyes. Well, I want to see you again, to touch you, feel you, taste
you, Join myself with you in every sense. You don't love as much
as I do? Well, that is the realest and most honest thing you can
say. Don't go away, even with God himself.

That responsive answer was enough for Manuela: she told
Thome she would not make the trip. And now their relationship
took a nasty turn. Thome became abusive, and once completely
losing his poise he struck her a dangerous thing to do to someone
as inflammable as Manuela. Throughout the months, to the drum-
beat of the siege guns, their quarrels grew in number and in
violence. Her only solace, for the moment, was to write to Simon
Bolivar; and he, despite the fact that he was immersed in affairs
of state, replied in considerable agitation:

MY LOVE,

Do you know how much pleasure your beautiful letter has
given me? It is very charming and was brought to me by Salazar.
The style of it makes me adore you for your wonderful spirit.

What you tell me of your husband makes me at once sad and
happy. I want to see you free, but innocent at the same time; for
I cannot bear the thought of being the thief of a heart that was
virtuous and is no longer thus., by my fault I do not know how
to reconcile my position with yours; your duty with mine. I do
not know how to cut this knot which even Alexander would only
complicate the more with his sword; for it is not a matter of
weapons or of force, but of pure and guilty love, of duty and
error; of my love, in short, for my beautiful Manuela.

148 The Four Seasons of

After that letter, silence dropped on Manuela. Weeks passed,
and Bolivar had no letters, no news. The situation seemed des-
perate enough for him to write to his Minister of War: "I have
heard nothing from my Manuela. I beg that you visit her, and ask
her for me Just how she is/"

General Tomas de Heres did so at once. He was an imposing
man, an Argentinian who had come to Lima with San Martin's
army and remained to serve Bolivar. He rode up to Thome's villa
with a bodyguard, visited Manuela, and like a good officer re-
ported to the Liberator:

Manuela says that she has written to you incessantly through
the medium of Cayetano Freyre ? and through him has received
letters from you. She is well and is living with her simpleton of a
husband "simpleton/* those are her words.

So it was Freyre who had to run the gantlet of James Thorne*s
violence. One of Manuela's oldest friends in Lima, he was now,
thanks to her intervention with Bolivar, Chief of Police. He idol-
ized Manuela and would do anything for her. Freyre was a hunch-
back, his gargoyle-like head large on his small misshapen body,
his bandy legs emphasized by his military uniform. Trained for
the law, he had met Manuela in the secret conclaves of the early
revolutionary plotters, and she had helped him to win and marry
his imperiously bosomed love. Trusted by both Bolivar and Man-
uela, he frequently acted as their courier; now he had to transmit
the disquieting news that James Thome was becoming very
threatening :

I enclose a letter for you from Dofia Manuelita, who gave it to
me just before her husband arrived. I told her that in case of any
trouble she should come to my house, where she can be taken
care of by my wife and placed in safety.

Bolivar had her letter in the fabulous silver town of Polosi, in

frigid Bolivia, and from there he replied:

Manuela I am in bed and have read your letter. I do not know
which surprises me most; the bad treatment you have received

The Three-Cornered 147

because of me 5 or the force of your sentiments which I at once
admire and applaud. On the road to this city I wrote you that if
you wish to fly from the things you fear, come to Arequipa, where
I have friends who wiU protect you.

He was not always able to write her personally, for he had to
attend to the birth of a new republic, a state carved out of the
territory of Upper Peru, to be named "Bolivia" in his honor. TPIease
forgive me for not writing to you in my own hand, but you are
used to this by now.** And so Juan Santana became the amanuensis
of love. Manueia chided him:

Why is it, that you forget to seal the letters that you write me
for the Liberator? You should not be so distracted, my little
friend, that you do not care if they are read by others or not. And
yet another why, when the Colonel orders you to write to me,
do you not wish to salute me, now that you no longer care to
write to me personally? What a rogue you are, but I shall punish
you. . . .

Those in Bolivar's suite understood the relation, and most of
all Juan Santana. He felt her problems as if lie were emotionally
involved in them, and when she did not reply to his letters, lie

wrote little Freyre to be sure that he had not, in some way, in-
jured her. Freyre answered:

I have spoken of you to Manuelita; this gracious lady esteems
you. The difficulty of talking to her is getting around some of the
inconveniences. I do not go much to her house because of that
brute of a husband. Having been told that I am a friend of the
Liberator, every time I go around there, he gives me looks that
would singe the devil; for this reason she cannot always write to
repeat her assurances of her interest in you.

Life for Manueia had by now become a nightmare. The atmos-
phere in Lima seemed poisoned, the siege dragged on in mounting
horror, and her marriage had long since ceased to be a marriage.
It was now reduced to open warfare, and by all indications
Manueia had enough. If there resided any efficacy in hope, then
she hoped for Bolivar's return. Down from the Andean waste-

148 The Four Seasons of Manuela

lands, a thousand miles over the rise and fall of mountains, rode
a courier with a letter from Bolivar:

I am desperate to return to Lima. If I do not do anything else,
then I think constantly throughout the day and the entire night
of your loveliness and of my love for you and about my return
and what you will do and what I shall do when we see each
other again,

Manuela had left James Thome. This was known all about Lima
before the act was actually accomplished. She did not precisely
leave their house, but when he had to go from Lima on business
she refused to accompany him. When next James Thome had news
of Manuela, she was living in her own house in Magdalena. As
the exigencies of business held him and he could not come per-
sonally, he wrote her. She did not answer. Then he multiplied his
attentions, begging, urging, demanding, then pleading that she
return to him. He flooded her with letters; they poured down on
her night and day, more insistent a motif, It seemed, than the
bombardment of the fortress. At last Manuela could stand it no
longer;

No, BO, no more, man, for God's sake say no more! Why do you
try to force me to change my resolution? A thousand times, No!
Sir, you are excellent, you are inimitable. But, my friend, it is no
small matter that I leave you for General Bolivar, to leave a hus-
band without your qualities would be nothing. Do you think for
a moment that, after being beloved of this General for years, and
with the security that I possessed his heart, I would choose to be
the wife even of the Father, Son, or the Holy Ghost, or of all
three? I know very well that I carmGl be united with him under
the laws of honor, as you call them, but do you believe that I feel
less or more honored because he is my lover and not my husband?
Oh, I do not live for the prejudices of society, which were in-
vented only that we might torture each other.

Let me be, my dear Englishman. Let me be. Let us instead do
something else. We shall many when we get to heaven; but on
this earth NO! Do you think this arrangement is bad? In our
heavenly home we shall lead entirely spiritual lives. There every-
thing will be quite British, for monotony is reserved for your na-

The Three-Cornered 149

tion (in love, that is, for they are much more avid in business).
You love without pleasure. You converse without grace, you walk
unhurried, you sit down with caution, you do not laugh even at

your own jokes. These are divine attributes, but I, miserable mor-
tal who can laugh at myself, laugh at you too, with all this English
seriousness. How 1 shall suffer in heaven! Quite as much as though
I were to go and live in England or Constantinople. You are more
Jealous than a Portuguese. That is why I do not love you. Am I in
bad taste?

But enough of jesting. Seriously and without levity and with, all
the conscientiousness, truth and purity of an Englishwoman, I
say that I shall never return to you again. You are a Catholic, I
am an atheist, and this is our greatest religious obstacle; that I am
in love with someone else is a greater and still stronger reason.
You see how exact is my reasoning?

Invariably yours,

MANXJELA

9

THE LAWS OF HONOR

IT WAS SUMMER, 1826. All the battles had been won. Even the
terrible siege had come to an end; the ragged remnant of General
Jose RodiTs army had marched out of the fortress with full honors.
Once again, the ships filled the harbors and a stream of luxuries
once more was pouring into Lima. International bankers were on
the scene to make tempting offers of loan money. There was, on
the surface at least, peace over the land.

The city of Lima overwhelmed Simon Bolivar with gifts: a gold
service for his table, the former Viceroy's carriage with his own
arms painted on its doors, a jewel-studded sword embellished with
hundreds of diamonds and emeralds, and a dress uniform so richly
embroidered with gold that he could not even nerve himself to
wear it. Throughout all the churches of Lima, supplicants began
their prayers: *O Lord! All good things from thee. Thou hast given
us Bolivar . * /* Poets sang his praises, and one in so exaggerated
a rhetoric over the skirmish of Junfn that Bolivar himself had to
protest:

You have extolled me to such a degree that we are cast down
into an abyss of oblivion. If you were not a poet, I could believe
you wished to write a parody of the Iliad, using the heroes of our
miserable farce as characters.

Yet only occasionally did he object. Bolivar loved it. For the
first time in fifteen years, he had been released from the pressing
details of administration that had made his life foil of little hells.

The Laws of Honor 151

These were the halcyon days something like one of those ever-
remembered summer evenings when day is no longer day and
night not yet night, with the soft afterglow of the day's dying still
pervading the sky. Such were the summer months of 1826.

Honors poured in on him from the outside world. His name was
spoken with grave respect in European councils; to North America
he was another liberator,, and a member of George Washington's
family sent him a medallion containing a lock of Washington's
hair and graced by a miniature by Gilbert Stuart: "This por-
trait of the author of liberty of North America ... to him who
achieved equal glory in South America.** With the medal came a
touching letter from the old Marquis de La Fayette, addressed
to the "Second Washington** of the New World: "Of all men living
and even all men in history you are the one to whom Washington
would have preferred to send this medallion/*

On the Senate floor, Mr* Henry Clay placed him in the galaxy of
a new Iliad. In Paris women wore hats a la "Bolivar. In London the
art shops on Conduit Street did good business in engravings show-
ing Bolivar in military dress. In Italy he was universally acclaimed.
Two years earlier Lord Byron, ennuied of women and writing, had
christened his vessel Bolivar as he sailed to death and glory in
Greece.

Bolivar had triumphed over everything the elements, the
mountains, time and distance. He had beaten the Spaniards, and
routed his rival Santander. And to fill his life, he had Manuela.

The victory was complete. People no longer speculated at
least in the open' about their affair. Manuela's husband had
been eclipsed, and by all those who surrounded the Liberator she
was granted the respect they would have shown his wife. He no
longer made an effort to put a diplomatic face on matters; time had
given sanction, and Bolivar was above criticism. At dinners Manu-
ela appeared, beautifully gowned and coiffed, as the mistress of
the vffla> reigning over a table which was the pride and the envy
of Lima. Bolivar kept the best chefs, and entertained lavisHy,
although he usually dined privately on a dish or two and appeared

152 The Four Seasons of Manuela

only at the end of the meal to give the formal toasts. Meanwhile
Manuela was allowed to preside.

She was there when Admiral Rosamel arrived on a delicate
mission. He had been sent by die King of France with a proposal
that Peru alow a number of its most promising youths to be
trained in Paris at the expense of the Crown. It was flattering, but,
to those in Lima who mistrusted Bolivar's political motives, highly
suspicious. It was an open secret that France would like to see
Bolivar crowned Simon I, king of an Andean empire in whose
affairs France hoped to play a leading role. In other parts of South
America, too, the talk of monarchy came up with "suspicious fre-
quency/ 7 From Venezuela an old companion-in-arms wrote to
Bolivar: "You should now become the Napoleon Bonaparte of
South America,** and an envoy was sent from Caracas to minute
the suggestion that he declare himself king. Bolivar's sister, Maria
Antonia, vehemently urged him to refuse:

They send you now a commission to offer you a crown. Receive
them as they deserve to be received. This title of Liberator is your
real one; it has extolled your name among the great of the earth.
You should repudiate anyone who offers you a crown.

So there was trouble in the Peruvian paradise. It did not come
alone from the talk of monarchy, or from Bolivar's magnificent
style of life with its golden service and the endless bottles of eau
de cologne, or even from the terrible fear that Manuela might be-
come Queen of Peru. It came from his dream, his political dream.
He wanted to form a series of Andean republics, with identical
constitutions and a single purpose, an organized group which
would embody his ideal of democracy. As a step in this direction,
he proposed to break up Peru, for he thought it gigantic, too large
and too powerful. He was going to separate Upper Peru from the
rest of the country and form it into the new nation of Bolivia.

There was scarcely anyone in Peru who really liked the idea.
There was opposition in Congress, but Bolivar snuffed this out by
the mere threat of leaving the country. When they thought of the
chaos that would follow his departure, tihey capitulated, and

The Laws of Honor 153

placed their seal of reluctant approval on the creation of the new
republic. Afterwards, while Peru grumbled, Simon Bolivar lived in
his villa seemingly oblivious to the growing discontent about him,
dictating to his secretaries the ideal constitution of the state that
was to bear his name,

Manuela, as usual because it was her nature, was nearer to the
true nature of things. She heard and saw much that Bolivar either
missed or chose to ignore. She saw the enemy where Bolivar saw
only mild opposition, she scented obstacles where he sensed only
minor irritants. What, for example* of the United States Consul?
Was he not imdermining Bolivar's prestige in North America?
What was one to make of letters such as the following, which she
discovered William Tudor was sending out?

The Liberator is a very ardent, impetuous character; he has
achieved such great things, has had such a sole direction of affairs
that the jarring movements of civil governments are regarded by
him too much in the light of military subordination. The officers
about him are young men, and three of them Englishmen
O'Leary, Fergusson, Wilson, devotedly attached to him, and un-
conditionally submissive. He has no characters of weight and dig-
nity near him, who can sustain a contrary opinion; and there is a
tone of excessive adulation and absolute deference in those of this
country who approach him. This state of things gives occasion to
the enemies of Bolivar. A Frenchman of liberal thought and intel-
ligent character said to me, "He will lose Thimself as Napoleon
did."

William Tudor was a very proper Bostonian. He did not like
the climate of Lima. He did not like Simon Bolivar. As for Manuela
especially as he was a bachelor she was an unpredictable
woman and beyond Ms comprehension. "Were I to repeat to you/*
he wrote Henry Clay, "some authentic anecdotes they would seem
incredible/* Tndor's ideas of democracy were firm and unalter-
able. He tad, after all, been in Boston during the Revolution, and
had imbibed revolutionary principles from his parents, who took
an active part in it. Besides, he was a literary figure, and anyone
who had not read Ms essays was certainly unlettered. He knew

154 The Four Seasons of

the world, he had traveled widely with his brother the "Ice King/ 7
who had made a sizable fortune carrying ice from Boston to the
tropic West Indies islands. Tudor was small and precise, his high
white neckstock and lace jabot were crisply immaculate; he had
gray cold eyes, a cleft chin, a thick lower lip which he pushed out
when irritated, and a habit of cocking his right eye in disagree-
ment. Both lip and eye were often seen in these positions es-
pecially where Bolivar was concerned. But it was only after
Manuela had spoken out against him in public that he came out
openly against the Liberator. "His model/* he said, "is now
Napoleon, and his ambition is equally unbounded!'*

Simon Bolivar had just dispatched his constitution for Bolivia.
He planned it to combine the virtues of all political systems, but
what he did was to disregard Napoleon's dictum that a constitu-
tion should be short and vague. Instead of the virtues of all sys-
tems, said his detractors, he had brought together all their de-
fects. His plan called for a lifetime presidency a scheme which,
if followed by other South American nations, would give Mm con-
trol of half the continent. So at least said his political opponents.
William Tudor interpreted it this way:

It is in the highest degree painful to change a favorable opinion
we have formed of any individual and how much more so when
tibat individual is so eminent and his own great reputation is at
stake and the hopes and credit of these new Republics are in-
volved with it The deep hypocrisy of General Bolivar has hitherto
deceived the world, tho* many of his former friends have for more
than a year past discovered Ms view and abandoned him.

It was difficult to keep any secrets in Lima. Though now there
were no newspapers, it mattered little, rumor was the lifeblood
of society. The lack of secrecy, the want of continuity made im-
possible any movement of genuine surprise. There was a plan for
a revolt against Bolivar in the higher echelons of society and it
was well hidden. Many prominent people in Lima were behind it,
but as usual the best intelligence of it came from Manuela's crea-
tures,, who picked up news of it at night in some of the picanterias.

The Laws of Honor 155

For soldiers* tongues, loosened by rum., babbled everything they
knew and much they did not know. By the end of July 1826,
Manuela had at least enough to show that there was an organized
movement to seize Bolivar, his aides and his generals, and banish
them with the main body of the Colombian army from Peru, When
this was confirmed by Captain Espinosa, who acted as an agent
provocateur, Bolivar moved with stirprising suddenness. William
Tudor reported:

All the officers of the Peruvian corps stationed In the capital
were arrested. It is said that 80 to 80 persons are in confinement
in the Convents of St. Domingo . . . Bolivar was thrown in the
most violent agitation by this event, and if prudence of the Min-
isters is not able to calm his feelings it is feared that executions
will begin.

Bolivar had won again. Yet winning sometimes means losing,
for now the summer evening of his life, those halcyon days, were
gone. Night was upon him, night closed in on him with all the
menacing shadows of tumult. Revolt in his native land of Vene-
zuela threatened the whole fabric of Gran Colombia; Bogota was
a suppurating wound; and Vice-President Santander urged him to
return at once to stanch the flow of blood. Geography was the
monster 7 his real enemy. It assailed Bolivar on every side. He had
to be at al places at the same time, but the distances were im-
mense. It took two months for a letter to reach him from Colombia;
Panama was fifty-five days away, Venezuela three months. Cour-
iers had to go through jungles, ford raging rivers, ride up and over
the swooning heights of the Andes, killing a dozen mounts before
they could reach Bolivar in Lima. Because of this it was impossible
for him to be kept correctly apprised of events; a minor problem
was a disaster before he learned of it

In high., heaven-bound Bolivia > his *ideaT republic was also
coming apart at the seams. General Sucre, who had agreed to be-
come 'lifetime" president for only a limited period, was involved
in the complexities of the new state. But even worse. It was the
"natural man/* Simon Rodriguez, the Minister of Public Educa-

156 The Four Seasons of Manuela

tion, who caused him Ms greatest worry. Rodriguez was in hot
water with everyone at once the governors, the mayors, the
priests and the mothers of the children whom he instructed. He
taught anatomy in his "natural school" by taking off his clothes and
walking around the frigid classroom "so that the pupils could ac-
custom themselves to the naked body." His discourse was so
heavenly that no one understood him. Nor had age withered his
interest in women. Although his "hair was white as snow, and
he had an angelic face, 9 * he made a try for every woman who came
within reach. When at last he was forced "because of circum-
stances" to marry little Manuela Gomez, the citizens of the capital
would have no more of him. He was sent, with his girl wife,
scurrying into Peru. There, under the motto "Light and Virtue of
America/' he opened a model school, and in the same room
operated a candle factory. Under this rubric Samuel Robinson,
who had wanted to turn the world into a paradise for all and suc-
ceeded only in making it a hell for himself, dipped his wick and
in off moments taught the children.
So went Bolivar's world.

Time was working against Bolivar now. He could no longer
delay, even though he believed that his presence in Lima was
necessary as a unifying force to keep the Republic together. If he
lingered here any longer, the whole of his life work, and his finest
creation, the Republic of Gran Colombia, would fall apart.

His firm decision to leave threw Lima into great agitation. For
as much as many feared his power, they feared his departing even
more. They looked around at the thousands of Colombian troops,
they thought of the brigands that haunted the hills about their
city, they examined all the factions within the government, and,
seeing the focal points of chaos, they grew apprehensive of the
future. Delegations came out to visit Mm, they exhausted every
form of flattery to urge him to remain. A committee of the most
striking society women drove to his villa in open carriages, to
entreat him to reconsider. And there, under the cold eye of

The Laws of Honor 157

Manuela, one of the most luscious of them read aloud a poetic
appeal.

Bolivar drank all this in, promised to reconsider.

TLadies, dear ladles, silence is the only answer I can give to your
enchanting words/'

William Tudor, who stood on the fringe of the crowd, cocked
Ms right eye and said, They have influenced his ardent character
almost to madness." But later, when the delegation tad gone,
Bolivar went to the door with Tudor and told Mm with firmness,
"1 shall go to Colombia."

Colonel Daniel OTLeaiy was the first of Ms aides to be dis-
patched. His mission was to ride the twenty-eight hundred miles
to Venezuela, to survey conditions there, and to have a report
ready for Bolivar on his arrival

To Quito he sent a veteran of Napoleon, one who served the
Emperor at Austerlitz: "Tomorrow, on August 8th/* Bolivar in-
formed the government in Bogota, **my aide-de-camp Colonel
Charles Demarquet is leaving for Quito to gather our men together
and maintain peace.**

Then lie prepared for Ms own departure.

And for Manuela, this meant another leave-taking, another time
of separation. Obviously she could not accompany him; the
journey was hard and long, and it was to be made at what would
be a killing pace for a woman. There were other considerations
too, more forcible than these. His mission was now to mend the
rifts between men, not exaggerate them, and the presence of
La Saenz, whose name and reputation was already talked about,
would upset Ms plans. He did not know his future. If die govern-
ments could be unified, he envisioned himself retiring from office
and living on his estates; there in the peace and ease of sanctuary,
Manuela would be with Mm again. It was a golden dream.

Meanwhile, Bolivar felt very deeply the equivocal position in
wMcii he would leave Manuela. She would be, in effect, a dis-
carded mistress. Without Mm, she would be put upon by the
women of Lima. It was a terrible situation. In secrecy he drew to-

158 The Four Seasons of Manuela

gether his most trusted friends, including the Minister of War
and humpbacked Cayetano Freyre, and placed her well-being in
their hands.

Manuela did not attend the great farewell banquet given in
Bolivar's honor. Nor was she at the smaller one on September 2nd
with his personal staff; but later that night they took supper in
his bedroom. And in that room, with its secret door which led to
her dressing room, Manuela gave her lover a farewell that only she
knew how to give.

All the remaining days of September Simon Bolivar was on the
move. His presence seemed to create harmony everywhere, but
as soon as he disappeared the personal conflicts began all over
again. In Quito they gave him a welcome such as he had when he
first rode into it four years before. He found there some news of
Lima a note from faithful Cayetano Freyre, saying "Dona
Maxmelita is well/* and some letters from Manuela. There was in
Quito a new pledge of unity, and yet the hydra heads of disunity
shot up again as he rode north.

Along the mountain trail over which he had once ridden in
triumph, Bolivar picked his way. The treeless rolling Andes
seemed at peace. The purple flowers of the potatos, planted and
tended by the Indians, climbed the mountain shoulders seemingly
to the level of the sky. Bolivar was filled with nostalgia for days of
lost happiness, and his thoughts were torn from political realities
to Manuela. On October 6, when he reached the little town of
Ibarra where, years before, he had written to Manuela, he was
overcome with the memory of her, and sat down to write a long-
promised letter:

MY CHABMDSTG MANUELA,

Your letter delighted me. Everything in you is love. I y too, am
suffering from this searing fever, which consumes us like two
children. In my old age I suffer from a sickness I should have long
since forgotten. Only you keep me in this condition. You beg me
to tell you that I love no one else but you. No, I do not love any-
one, nor shall I love anyone else. The shrine which is yours will

The Laws of Honor 159

never be desecrated by another Idol or image s unless it be God
himself. Believe me I love you, and shall love only you, and
nobody else but you. Live for me and for yourself. Live to console
the unfortunate ones, and your lover who longs for you.

I am so tired with all this travel and with all the troubles of
your country that I shall not have time to write you long accounts
as you wish me to do. But if I do not pray, day and night in turn
I think of your charms., and when we shall see each other., and
what I shall do when I see you again. No more with my own
hand! Do not write.

After this, Simon Bolivar was swallowed up in the Andean
world.

1O

THE RISE AND THE
FALL

THE NEXT KEVOKF came with the changing o the guard.

The moment, it is certainly true, had been cleverly selected by
its leader, for he had consulted the almanac, and on the night of
the 25th of January, 1827, there would be a total eclipse of the
moon. Under the cover of a veiled sky, the revolting troops could
be shuffled about without untoward suspicion. During the night,
Colombian soldiers clad in their coarse green homespun sauntered
in groups of twos and threes toward the center of Lima. There,
in the dark shadows of projecting eaves, Colonel Jose Bustamente,
muffling his voice behind a great black Spanish cloak, directed
them to their prearranged places. All through the dark silent
hours, the troops took their positions; the five gates were heavily
guarded, the parapets were lined with soldiers. At the precise
moment, every house in which there lived a general officer of the
Colombian army was surrounded. Before the sun appeared over
the Andes all Lima knew what had happened during the night
the Colombian troops had revolted against their generals.

William Tudor, awakened by his servant, slipped into clothes
and made a tour of the city:

On the 26th [January] the people of Lima were surprised to
find that the Colombian troops . , . occupied the great Square
at daylight and sentinels at all corners prevented everyone from
entering it On that day shops were shut and business suspended*

The Rise and the Fall 161

It was soon known that a majority of the officers the present
commander of the troops is Lt Colonel Bustamante had ar-
rested their two Generals, Jacinto Lara and Arthur Sandes and
five Colonels; and ? so completely was the business executed, that
they were all arrested in their beds without opposition; and
hitherto this revolution has not cost a drop of blood. The Castles
of Callao had been occupied the evening before. These officers
and a few others of subaltern rank were sent prisoners to the
Castles; and the troops were then marched to their respective
quarters.

The Minister of War, Tomas de Heres, who was supposed to
protect Manuela, was the only one who escaped. He had been
outside the city, and when news of the revolt reached him he fled
in a canoe and boarded a French warship lying in harbor. Caye-
tano Freyxe, stripped to his underclothes., found himself clapped
into jail, deprived of his office; and Perez, the other protector of
Manuela, was under house arrest. There was no one left of Bolivar's
faction, no one at liberty except Manuela.

Ten days later, at Ms headquarters, Colonel Bustamente looked
over Ms reports with intense satisfaction. He had carried out the
conspiracy of Santander perfectly. There had been no bloodshed;
all of Bolivar's principal officers, himself excepted, were incom-
municado; and the Colombian troops had received their first
arrears of back pay- As soon as Simon Bolivar left Lima, Santander
had sent Ms agents down to lay the groundwork of this plot. He
made contact with those Peruvians who, disliking Bolivar and his
political ideas, would move when they had assurance that the
Colombian army would be neutralized. Santander's agent found
the ideal ^neutralized in Colonel Bustamente. He was a "political**
soldier, a friend of the Vice-President, and he moved through life
like a bishop on a chessboard obliquely. He gathered the ser-
geants of the Colombian battalions and told them that only the
Vice-President of Gran Colombia, Santander, supported their
liberties; that the constitution as drawn by General Bolivar marked
a return to despotism. Besides, if they would take part in the con-
spkacy and arrest their officers, their bade pay would be given

182 The Pour Season of Manuela

them, they would go home, and he, Bustamente, would be made
a general.

Bustamente had left nothing to chance. All outgoing mail from
Lima was being censored, all travelers were subject to the strictest
scrutiny; so that by the time Simon Bolivar learned of the revolt, it
would be too late for him to intervene. Everything was proceeding
perfectly, and already some of the Colombian troops were on their
way home from Peru. Nothing to chance. . . . Then an orderly
burst in to tel him that Manuela, dressed in the uniform of a
colonel, was in the army barracks trying to bring about a counter-
revolution.

Manuela was a favorite among the soldiers. They liked this
woman who could ride like a man, and who could yet be, when
the occasion demanded, so very feminine. She had gone out of her
way, many times, to see that they got things to relieve the eternal
monotony of the army. Moreover they were restless in their bar-
racks while waiting repatriation, worried about their reception
in Colombia. Now she walked up and down among them, a heroic
little figure in her colonel's uniform, pleading, cajoling, threaten-
ing, and brandishing a drawn sword for emphasis. Manuela stood
alone against the revolt.

The Peruvian government too was taking no chances. At twelve
o'clock that night soldiers appeared at her house, seized her in
bed, and brought her protesting and fighting to the Convent of
the Nazarenas. Colonel Bustamente himself took charge of the
case. Through the iron grating of the cloistered nunnery, he ad-
vised the Abbess that Manuela was to be kept in seclusion, to be
allowed no communication with anyone ? and above all not to
have pen or paper. The Abbess Agustina de San Joaquin did not
like the role thrust upon her; but the gentleman could be assured
that she would understand how to handle the senora, and that
from this cloistered nunnery she would communicate with no
one.

The next morning Manuela wrote a letter to Crist6bal Amuero
protesting her arrest:

The and the Fall 163

Senor Consul of Gran Colombia:

To you as representative of the Republic to which 1 have the
honor to belong^ 1 wish to state that at twelve o'clock at night on
the 7th of February, this present year of 1327 ? my house was
entered, 1 was in the village of Magdalena, where I have always
lived. They ordered me to surrender and to proceed under arrest
to the capital. I was not able at once to do so because of my poor
state of health* the result was that an officer was left in my room
to keep me under observation all night; all the streets surrounding
my house were full of troops. The following day I was taken to
the Convent of the Nazarenas as a prisoner of war or as a crimi-
nal; as 1 am not truly the latter, 1 do not know for what reason I
should be considered the former.

Up until now the reason for my imprisonment has not been
made known to me, nor who is my accuser; and the process is
entirely inquisitorial I maintain that I am a Colombian and that
there is lacking here the consideration and gratitude owed to this
nation, and further I claim the privileges which the rights of men
extend to those persons imprisoned, justly or unjustly.

I place my case in your very capable hands. I do not know if
there is a reason or not that I should be judged as Peruvian, if so
then let them punish me as a Peruvian. The Government has for-
gotten Article 117 of the Constitution of this country.

My vindication is absolutely necessary. Permit me to remind
you that as a representative of the Republic of Colombia, it is
your duty to demand it, and you should do so with all the energy
befitting a representative. I insist that the justice of my case will
find favor in the eyes of all thinking men, the only competent
judges of one such as myself, whose only guilt is to belong to a
Republic which has brought so much good to Peru.

Cristobal Amtiero tried to do something for Manuela, but lie
himself was in so much danger that he raised only feeble protest

He was like aH the late agents of General Bolivar [said William
Tudor], some of whom have good reasons to fear the investiga-
tions which the Peruvian Congress will doubtlessly make. AH of
them have seen their hopes of fortunes and title destroyed, but
have remained unmolested in this city. Some of them have un-
questionably been engaged in secret intrigues of which Mr.
Annero [ Amuero] a merchant and Colombia charg d'affaires a

164 The Pour Seasons of Manuela

man like almost all of the agents of Bolivar of unprincipled char-
acter was the ostensible mover,

The Ides of March were upon Manuela. She wrote letters to
soldiers whom she knew in the battalions, she searched out her
remaining friends by letter, hoping to get some news to Simon
Bolivar, Her captors increased their precautions. The letters went
out from the convent just the same. They caught Jonotas with
some of the dispatches in her turban and hurried her off without
trial to the women's prison at Casas Matas, notorious for its un-
sanitary conditions and the perversion of its inmates, but in it
they threw Jonotas, nevertheless (for they thought her to be a
hermaphrodite, something like a mollusc, the active and passive
libidinal principles being united within her, so that her sexual
state was in equilibrium). So Natan, dressed like a nun, became
Manuela's courier.

The letters were taking effect. There were several outbreaks
among the Colombian soldiers. The Peruvians lived in fear of
them. Peruvian troops were brought down and "kept on the alert,
with bayonets fixed and ready to be called out at any moment."
But fust at the time they were being raised to a fever pitch to
declare for Bolivar the transports arrived, and on March 19th two
thousand of them were marched aboard. A Peruvian official said
to William Tudor: "We had never expected to get rid of them
without a battle/*

Manuela had ample time in the confines of the nunnery to go
over her rise and her fall. It hardly seemed possible that so much
had happened to her in five years. In 1822 the world, her world,
had been full of promise. Later, as she moved with the army and
with history, there had been moments of peril and days of despair,
yet always her love for Simon Bolivar and for his ideals had sus-
tained her. Even during the difficulties with her husband, there
had always been the future. Her rise as the favorite of La Mag-
dalena, with the social power of a vicereine, had been rapid and
wonderful. Now in a few weeks it was all gone, position, property,
future and lost to her now when she needed Trim most was

The Rise and the Fall 165

Bolivar. At thirty years of age she had won lost. The old
uneasiness returned to her, that feeling of "imbelonging/* It

alternately upset her and exacerbated her, and she was shattered
by the rapidity of her fall. Yet there was no dissolving into tears;
the slightest feeling of coercion awakened in her an animal fury.
The Peruvian officials called her an il-tongued harpy, and, in
the words of the Foreign Secretary, she was "insulting the public
honor and morals.** He complained that even though * e she was con-
fined within a nunnery she ridiculed the order of Incommunicado
imposed on her and she continued to receive visits from officials
of the government." At last, in fear of a counterrevolution which
her activities were promoting, he issued her an ultimatum, and on
April 14 reported it to Santander:

Cristobal Amuero and Manuela Saenz have never once ceased
their efforts to seduce the loyalties of the people and expend their
energies in the direction of counterrevolution. I have precise de-
tails, which is beyond one's imagining, of the scandalous corre-
spondence between Consul Amuero and his woman.

Therefore I have sent an ultimatum at four this afternoon to
Manuela Saenz, which states that she must leave Peru within
twenty-four hours. If her departure is not verified within this
time, I shall imprison her in Casas Matas.

The brig Eluecher sailed north toward Ecuador, under lowering
gray clouds. All around it the world was opaque with a thick mist,
low-flying cormorants came by, skimming in tight formation, close
to the white-capped sea. Then they too disappeared, and there
was only the creaking of the plunging ship to remind the reluctant
voyagers that they were living a real moment and not some foolish
dream. So this was the end of the great battle of liberation. This
was the final recompense for all the privations, the high hopes, the
dream of peace and independence. The officers who led them to
victory arrested by their own troops, imprisoned without trial,
tben shoved on board ship at night and sent off like criminals in-
fected with a plague. General Lara, prison-pale, was uncom-

166 The Four Seasons of Manuela

municative. Arthur Sandes tried to make conversation with
Manuela, and then let it go. Not so Cordoba. He was in a fury.
Before boarding the ship he had made official report to Simon
Bolivar:

The Foreign Minister called the Consul o Colombia and told
Mm to prepare me and the other officers and troops still in Lima
so as to leave the following day. The city was alarmed and now
even more so from the provocations of Manuela Saenz. . . . She
embarked with me.

Manuela stung Cordoba with invective; she was incensed at Mm
for not taking a firmer stand against the conspirators, and she ac-
cused him of disloyalty toward Simon Bolivar. Now Cordoba made
no concealment of Ms hatred for Manuela; he believed that her
escapades had much to do with the resentment of the Peruvians
against them. There was a bitter argument. A young lieutenant
tried to intervene and was pushed aside.

It was the impertinent manner of Manuela Saenz, and the man-
ner in which she treated Cordoba and the travesty she made of
Mm in front of the other officers, that caused the general to treat
her with brusquerie; this was the opening motif of their animosity.

The bitterness did not diminish as they came to Guayaquil.
Cordoba was so enraged at one point that, had Manuela been a
man, he would have put a pistol ball right between her eyes. It
was unfortunate that they separated at Guayaquil in this mood,
for one should not quarrel with one of the Furies,

Guayaquil was draped in misery. The split-bamboo houses,
light and airy and thatched with palm, looked more like the huts
of a run-down Indian village than the buildings of the first port
of Ecuador. The streets were quagmires, gray-black buzzards
fought in the mud over the offal no one thought to remove. The
canteens were filled with undisciplined soldiers, and the whole
place srnelled with the sickly fumes of crude sugar-cane ram.
There had been a revolt here too; the officers were confined to

The Rm and the Fall 167

quarters. Manuela was not allowed to communicate with anyone.

Jonotas came out of steerage as disarranged as a loor mop 5 and
together they planned their trip to Quito. It was not to be in state,
as she had traveled five years before. The whole journey was to
be on foot:

So she left there with an escort of four Colombian soldiers
whom she chose from among the handsomest men of the regi-
ment. She walked In small journeys with no servant other than
her mulattress in ten days she arrived in Quito.

Autumn

The Years 1827-1830
PART THE E E

Bogota

11

BO G O TJ J CITY OF
HOLT FAITH

JL/OQM HUNG ABOUT the houses, drifted like a miasma around the
sullen people, sprang up at the whispered conversations of the
soldiers, suspended its terror-pinioned wings over the land.

Manuela felt it as soon as she had crossed the invisible line that
separated her native country from Colombia. There were no vivas
here, no words of cheer for the mud-splattered soldiers who ac-
companied her. Once these Venezuelan lancers would have been
received in every house as blood brothers, now the most wretched
peasants turned their backs when they approached. The revolution
had bled white every hope, every feeling. The land had passed in
these three hundred years from savagery into feudalism, from
monarchy to republic. Now It was passing from revolution into
anarchy.

Manuela was unable to ignore it* At first she gave little heed to
the scrawls Down with Bolivar freshly daubed on the white-
washed houses; but when the complaints became vocal she un-
leashed her tongue, lashing the harbingers of discontent with a
billingsgate she could use on occasions such as this. Everywhere
throughout Colombia she met the familiar pattern. On her arrival
in village or town, people would seek her out and pour upon her
all their lamentations. They had been buoyed up by some dream
of a social apocalypse which the wars for independence were to
bring; now they were reaping the winter wheat of these lost

172 The Four Seasons of Manuela

illusions. There were disease, poverty, want. Commerce was at a
standstill. Soldiers mustered out after long service walked the
land and showed their wounds stinking with gangrene. Times were
worse, they moaned, than when the Spaniards were in possession
of the land. Bolivar was a tyrant, just as unprincipled as the godos
who had fought for their King and Mother Spain.

So went the impressions from mountain to mountain, village to
village.

What was this dies irae that hovered over Colombia, what was
this dirge of chaos moaned by everyone? Was this the anarchy
which Simon Bolivar had so long feared now misery, given
counterpoint by disaffection, had become dissonance? She could
understand now why Bolivar had need of her, and for him she was
taking this long journey by horse from Quito to Bogota, through
mountains perched on end and over sky-high paramos scoured by
hail-laden winds.

It had been months before Manuela had heard from him. She
had rested in Quito, at her brother's home, nursing her bruised
soul. Still nothing came from him, no letter, no brief message to
assuage her feelings. To be exiled from Peru, to be treated like a
strumpet, to have lost in one moment a social position which she
had so long wanted, to be reduced to momentary indigence, to
^unbelong" again . . .

At first the ignominy of exile, the loss of everything which tad
been something to her, had calmed to the stupor of shock; but
when this wore off and she surveyed her loss, she was overwhelmed
by its immensity. Her brother Jose Maria, now a general in the
army of the Republic, was immensely kind. He took her to his
home near the Plaza of San Francisco and there tried to shield
her from the barbs thrown at her by the women of Quito, who,
with venom undiminished by the years, gave the prostrated
Manuela a fine display of their animosities. This could have been
in a sense endured, had it not been for Simdns silence. Naturally
she knew that he was overburdened by events that ever since
lie had left Lima in the autumn of 1826, he had been in the saddle

Bogota, City of 173

riding across the serrated face of South America, passing from
crisis into crisis. The revolt of his own regiments in Lima 5 the
moment he left it, threw him into unbounded rage. But then ? cut
off by vast distances from al contact with Peru and forced into
frustrated inaction, he sank for weeks into a lethargy of indecision,
shivering in the night-agonies of ague and the day-agonies of
melancholia.

Then one day there came a letter. It was dated September 11,
1827, and it had taken almost two months to reach her from
Bogota. General Arthur Sandes, whom she had not seen since the
time they were exiled, personaly delivered it into her hands* It
was a beautiful letter:

MANUKLA:

The memory of your enchantments dissolves the frost of my
years . . . your love revives a life that is expiring. I cannot live
without you* I can see you always even though I am far away
from you. Come. Come to me. Come now.

She was wanted. Yet that one letter could not erase at once
the neglect by which she felt he had denied her. She would go,
of course, for she felt, she knew, she was needed. But she would
first make her own position clear and unequivocal:

I am very angry, and very ill. How true it is that long absences
kill little loves and increase great passions. You had a little love
for me, and the long separation killed it But I, I who had a great
passion for you, kept it to preserve my peace and happiness. And
this love endures and will endure so long as Manuela lives. . . .

I am leaving for Bogota the first of December and I come
because you call me to you. However, once I am there, do not
afterward suggest that I return to Quito; better that I should die
than to be taken for some shameless trull,

So she left, as she had promised. And with a familiar retinue
a squadron of lancers to guard her, much of Bolivar's personal
equipment that he had left behind in the rapidity of his move-
ments, the strongboxes of his private archives which she stffl
guarded like a Pandora*s box, the mules loaded with the traveling
trunks of her wardrobe, and the slaves and the servants.

174 The Four Seasons of Manuela

Colonel Charles Demarquet was her escort A self-possessed,
much-traveled Frenchman doomed by his love of battle to be for-
ever a soldier, he had fought with Napoleon at Austerlitz and
there lost three fingers. He found himself at the age of forty still
Mars's creature. He was now Bolivar's aide-de-camp; this inter-
lude with Manuela was a welcome departure from the downing of
rebellions. And if there were opportunities for conquest here, he
made nothing of them; for "Manuela,** said a friend of his 5 "Vent
to New Granada under the guidance of my friend Colonel
Demarquet. ... He always affirmed that he had been a platonic
guide.' 5

It was a long and frightful journey. It would have been bad
enough in its thousand miles when the roads had been the King's
Highway, paved with stone, its bridges kept in repair, and its
taverns operating under royal license. Now it was a small hell-
journey. There was little or no food; bridges destroyed during the
war remained unrepaired; gangs of discharged soldiers infested
the highways, waylaying any who did not take the precaution to
go well armed. All along the way General Bolivar had alerted his
officers to be on watch for the caravan of Manuela. More than
that: for when she reached the verdant Cauca valley on her way
to the small colonial city of Popaydn, a letter of encouragement,
in his own hand, awaited her.

So it went on day after day, through the verdant valleys, up
the sides of the Andes, down again into the gorges of rushing
rivers. Christmas of 1827 came and went. Nothing marked it but
the steady fall of rain, a rain which had usurped the place of the
sun. The climate and the sullenness of the people had a depressing
effect on everyone. Manuela must have wondered about the
strange alchemy of love. For love and love alone sustained her;
the feeling of being wanted was an elixir in her that gave her
courage to go on. Simon's letter, read and reread, lay under her
military pelisse: * c . . . your love revives a life that is expiring. I
cannot live without you. Come. Come to me. Come

City of 175

One month and clays after leaving Quito a few days
beyond the New Year of 1828 the mule caravan to die lat

environs of Bogota. The animals, mud-splattered and weary,
galled by saddle sores from the long ride, seemed to sense the end
of the journey. At Cuatro Esquinas The Four Corners the
caravan came to the stone-paved road, here still called the King's
Highway. A little settlement strung out along the road, thick mud
walls and dun-colored., windowless houses thatched with straw,
huddled among the agave plants.

The lancers unwound their legs from the saddle pommels,
swung their feet into stirrups, straightened their jaguar-skin shakos
and lifted up their steel-tipped bamboo shafts, on which hung
limply the gonfalons of the Republic; they prepared for their
entrance into the capital. Still the pattern of their reception did
not change. People emerged briefly from their houses and looked
at the squadron, then quickly, sullenly, went back inside and
barricaded the doors.

The earth, too, was unsmiling. The light of a rainy sky trembled
on the willows, shedding verdurous gloom over the green savan-
nahs. Even the chattering Jonotas, who usually could extract
humor from the most terrible of moments, had f alen silent.

To Manuela, there was a single reason for the discontent she
had seen these thousand miles. The reason was contained in a
word, in a name. It was . . . Santander. This "man of laws/* with
his stupid dithyrambs about liberty, his double-tongue and his
double-dealing, had brought the country to the edge of civil
war. Bolivar had come back to Colombia to end the disunity, but
Ms policies of reconciliation had merely opened wider the wounds
of perfidy. He knew wel what was needed; how had he phrased it?

As long as the leaders congregate around me, Colombia will
remain united; afterward there will be civil war.

Yes, Bolivar was the catalyst. The three divisions of the Re-
publicVenezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador had little in com-
mon. In large measure their interests conflicted; there was no

176 The Four Seasons of Manuela

common economic policy; the distances were great and un-
bridged; the Andes, unyielding and monolithic, divided the land
into spheres of particularism, where each section was ruled by its
own self-centered leader. There was only a single element an
ideal, a name, a man who held all these discordant elements to-
gether. And that was Bolivar. Her poor Simon was prematurely
wearing himself out by his constant riding back and forth between
the contending parties, trying to hold them together in some
semblance of unity until the Republic could climb out of the
chaos that a war of fourteen years had created. And how was he
treated? No sooner had he left Lima than Santander sent down
agents and brought about a revolt in his regiments; his finest
officers were arrested., sent out of the country they had freed.
It was impossible for Santander to deny it; he had ordered the
church bells of Bogota rung as if for a great victory.

For Bolivar, it was the last straw, the one thing needed to con-
vince him that, as Manuela had long known, Santander was indeed
"the enemy.'* "I can no longer rely on him," the Liberator said, "I
have no longer any confidence in his heart or his morals."

So Bolivar reassumed the duties of his office, and called for
broader powers to meet the present emergencies and to crush
rebellions wherever they reared themselves. Then he demanded
a new constitution. **We must make a new social contract the
people must redeem their sovereignty ."

Santander responded ^Dictatorship," and came out openly
against him with formidable opposition. Bolivar answered "Or
chaos." And so they were joined in combat. Now, where once
there were cheers, Manuela heard Bolivar's name hissed with
execrations. The time of reckoning was at hand.

The narrow streets of Bogota were empty as they entered. The
sun, breaking through the heavy mist, glistened moistly on the
wet cobblestones; for a moment it highlighted the squat color-
splashed buildings; then it disappeared, and its place was usurped
by the mist Manuela, who tad lived amidst the gay Sevillian
architecture of Lima, was depressed by her first view of the capital

Ctty of 177

of Gran Colombia. She could hardly believe that it had a popula-
tion of twenty thousand* The streets were so Barrow that if one
were sufficiently long-armed he might meet the hand of his
neighbor stretched out from the other side. The buildings had
nothing of the airy gayness of Lima, they were box-like, heavy, of
thick-waled adobe construction easily converted into massive
fortresses once the great doors were closed. The windows, heavily
barred or grilled, were without glass; the cold Bogota air (as well
as the curiosity of the passers-by) was met by screens of thicldy
starched muslin.

Bogota lay at the foot of mountains that reared up behind the
city. Its principal street, the Gale de Comercio, ran with an un-
erring straightness through its heart; and along it was a monoto-
nous line of buildings the stores all barred with grills as if they
were barracks. Of God ? Bogota had a divine sufficiency. The prin-
cipal buildings were churches or convents six for monks, four
for nuns, and two (the College of the Holy Rosary was the most
famed) for schools of higher learning. Bogota, as Manuela was
soon to learn forcibly, was intensely religious; despite twenty years
of war, one third of the real estate in the capital was still in the
hands of the Church.

The squadron., with Colonel Demarquet in the lead position,
emerged from the winding Calle de Florian and clattered in the
great plaza, scattering on its way a few Indians who had braved
the jsharp cold rain to draw water from the fountain in the center.
The plaza was the amphitheater of Bogota; markets were held
there on Fridays, religious processions when the divine calendar
decreed it, and bullfights when bulls could be found. And now
as the reign of terror gripped tie land,, it was the arena for public
executions. The Cathedral, stately and massive, was at one end;
governmental buildings, not in the least different from any of
the other one-storied structures of the capital, flanked the other
sides.

Colonel Demarquet summoned with Ms mutilated left hand one
of the Indians. The man snatched the sodden hat from his head,

178 The Four Seasons of

puled at the rug-like ruana draped across his shoulders, and in
proper humility listened to the questions. Did he know where the
Liberate^ General Bolivar, was staying at this moment? Was he
at his manor house the Quinta or was he at the Palace of San
Carlos? The Indian suggested he must be living at the Quinta,
for the Colonel could see that Bogota had been rocked only
recently by a terrible earthquake, which had left many of the
churches topless and the governmental palace in partial ruins.

Manuela would have preferred to go to the Palace, anywhere
other than the Quinta. After the long journey, she had need of
the ministry of Jonotas to be bathed and perfumed with
verbena water, to have her artful pastel make-up applied, to slip
out of her riding clothes and be enfolded into some cashmere
affair that would give her body grace and poise. It was need the
Colonel be reminded? almost two years since she had been seen
by the General.

Denaarquet was a soldier. He had his orders; and the orders
were to bring Manuela to his General at once on arrival. While
he was, as a Frenchman, delighted to be taking some part in am
affaire de coeur y he would in this instance follow exactly his com-
mands from Bolivar. To the Quinta!

With night hanging its blue veils over the streets o Bogota,
the squadron went on its way. The stores were closed, the narrow
sidewalks silent and deserted; only a few of the streets were
pallidly lit by small candles which flickered behind glass globes.
People who ventured abroad were accompanied by a servant, who
led the way with a small light to break a darkness as black as a
woFs mouth.

The villa of Bolivar the Quinta lay north of the city. The
squadron clattered along the cobblestones the while raising a
regiment of barking dogs crossed the Carmen Bridge which
spanned the San Agustin River, and made for the suburbs.

On a rise of ground partially enveloped in mist was the Quinta,
It lay at the base of a gigantic mountain, at the mouth of fie
Boqueron. Through this gap in the mountains, heavy, moisture-

City of 179

laden fog clouds drifted in to bank the city. Ribands of fog drifted
through the cedars, the oaks, the stately cypresses. The trees
were covered with aerial parasites that verdured their host plants
in gray-green color; these gathered the mist and gave it off as
tinkling rain* Buried in the mass of foliage was the villa, brilliant
with lights. Sounds of laughter drifted across the night, joining
the croaking of the frogs.

"Halt!"

The voice of the sentry cut across the night like a whip slashing
the air.

"Halt!"

And soldiers, rifles at ready, poured out of the guardhouse near
the gate. They surrounded the squadron.

**Who Eves?" queried a disembodied voice, as shadows became
men and men became bayonet-tipped guns.

"The Liberator."

The officer of the guard moved forward, waved his lamp in
Colonel Dernarquet's face. There was instant recognition. And a
salute. He moved around to the others, examined their papers. He
then held his light up to Manuela.

The startled officer saw a self-possessed woman in her thirties
looking down on him with a strange, enigmatic smile. She was
dressed in a hussar's uniform, blood-red pants, skintight and
braided in black arabesques, a military pelisse, and black military
jackboots, whose golden spurs gave out, as the horse stirred rest-
lessly, a sound like the tinlding of a small golden bell. A brace of
brass Turkish pistols, cocked and ready for use, was at her knees.
And, as if her attractive face did not suggest that she was indeed
woman, coral earrings dropped from her ears. A woman, dressed
like a tussar, riding at night the officer was almost ready to
begin a lengthy questioning when Colonel Demarquet, having
enjoyed the moment long enough, leaned from his horse and said
In a confidential tone, *T1iis, Sefior Capitan, is La Saenz,*"

Lining the path to the villa, between the thick moss-covered
trees, were the mementos of battles. Cannons that liad been

180 The POUT Seasons of Manuela

dragged "by Boliva/s troops to the heights of Carabobo stood there
in proud dignity, despite their broken caissons. There were bronze
mortars, used at the siege of Pasto, captured Spanish pieces still
bearing the arms of Fernando VII. Manuela walked by them, fol-
lowing the path to the villa, the tinkling of her golden spurs join-
ing the trilling of the tree frogs.

Glass doors opened into the foyer where candles behind hurri-
cane glass threw dancing shadows over the patterned red walls.
In the soft light, Manuela could see mahogany furniture, Empire
in style, upholstered in red damask; a sofa painted in golden
lacquer; a chair heavily ornamented with gold leaf. On the right
of the foyer was a small salon, also in red and gold, its walls hung
with pictures of Bolivar's battles. A lone candle glowed in the
massive glass candelabrum.

Manuela passed through the French doors that led to the library
a large room, papered in a warm red with a dark leaf pattern,
and lit by a large cut-glass candelabrum, where a hundred tapers
glowed like the Pleiades.

The day of the Congress of Ocafia was at hand, and all of
Boliva/s warriors were there, the officers of his legions who had
fought all the crucial battles of the war of independence. There
was William Fergusson, lively and gay; serious little OTLeary, now
a general; young Bedford Wilson, the son of Sir Robert Wilson;
and, since the days in Peru attached in warm affection to the cause
of Bolivar, Colonel Ibarra and Thomas Menby. And Dr. Moore,
complaining without cease of the ague which the dampness of
Bogota brought on. All were there, all of Manuela's old friends,
they whose lives had been bound together by his ideals.

There were, also, faces new to her. One of these was General
Urdaneta, a handsome officer and now a member of Bolivar's mili-
tary cabinet Like his leader, he was a Venezuelan, a complete
man, who under stress had serenity and exhibited personal
bravery. In this political world, where the double tongue of the
adder was in daily usage, he remained frank and firm, always as-
suming complete responsibility for his acts. His house in Bogotd,

City of 181

where his attractive wife Dolores held sway, was a center of re-
finement and noblesse. Urdaneta would have no difficulty in in-
cluding Manuela in the affection that he held for Simon Bolivar.

Nor would Jose Paris. Jose everyone called him Pepe was
the only one present in civilian dress, powder-blue broadcloth
frock coat, white shirt with high colar. He was one of Bolivar's
most self-effacing friends, a sensitive, well-traveled gentleman,
whose father had held lucrative offices under the Spanish Crown.
Pepe Paris had lived in Spain and France, and knew everyone of
consequence. He had served in the revolution; then when actual
combat had ceased, he had opened Colombia's famous emerald
mines, and now was one of the wealthy men of Bogota. He was
personally close to Simon Bolivar, whom he helped in the manage-
ment of his finances, but he at times entered the political scene.
His equanimity was hated by the political enemy.

Everyone present except General Cordoba, who could not
dissemble his hatred for Manuela greeted her with the same
respect they would have shown Simon Bolivar's wife; for she was,
beyond this, a companion-in-arms, one who had gone through
the test of fire with them in defeat and triumph.

It was the eve of Ocana the seating of the Congress that was
to decide the fate of Gran Colombia, and, in a more personal sense,
to decide the glory of Simon Bolivar. This meeting of his principal
advisers at tihe villa was less a conference to work out parlia-
mentary stratagems than a council of war to prevent the dis-
integration of Colombia. But with Manuela here the council
drifted into personalities, and in the warmth generated by Fergus-
son's generous pouring of Irish whisky the meeting evaporated
into pandemonium.

This brought out Bolivar's secretary, Jose Santana. He had not
seen Manuela since leaving Lima, and was delighted to have her
again with them. It had been Don Jose who had kept up a con-
tinuous flow of correspondence with her, when Bolivar did not
have time to write; it was Jose who had been the amanuensis of
passion, quilling the love letters which Bolivar dictated to him.

182 The Four Seasons of

He led her to Bolivar's study, and Manuek entered without
knocking. She had ridden a thousand miles to answer his sum-
mons: "Come. Come to me. Come now/"

Some time later, when Jose Palacios was closing the foyer door,
he heard the wild laughter of Manuela and the sound of her
golden spurs tinkling musically as they fell to the floor.

THE DIALECTICS OF
LOVE AND HATE

JLHEY WAT.KEB in the garden.

It was a beautiful day, still vibrant with the emotions of the
night; about Manuela hung an aura o loveliness, and the musk of
passion. Time had not stripped her of a particle of her mystery and
fascination, and she still remembered so few others had how
to give to Simon Bolivar's intense nature a new flow of energy.
Hand in hand, she in a cashmere with ermine-lined hood, he in
blue uniform with silver braid, they walked between the beds of
primroses. A toothless gardener, showing his vacant gums, bowed
before them and mumbled in good-natured raillery, "Your Excel-
lency, the Queen of Sheba has come to admire the beauty of the
flowers in the gardens of Solomon.**

Between the century-old cedars, where bell-shaped fuchsias
dropped red-flowering tear-petals, were massed honeysuckle and
wild roses. In the center of the formal garden was a fountain
carved from gray stone, whose gushing water filled the quiet days
with eternal murmuring. The vflla was a one-story colonial house,
with red tiled roof and red brick floors; the ceilings were low, deo
orated in gold leaf. There were four rooms and a foyer library,
salon, dining room, and bedroom warmed on cold Bogota nights
by a fireplace in the library, and by charcoal braziers in the other
rooms. The villa had been built in the beginning of the century
by Jose Antonio Portocarrero, under the shadows of the moun-

184 The Four Seasons of

tarns of Monserrate. The estate had passed on the death of Porto-
carrero to his daughter, who, being under suspicion as a royalist
sympathizer, was more than willing to sell it to the new Republic.
On July 16, 1820, the Quinta had been given to Simon Bolivar "as
a small demonstration of gratitude and recognition . . . for the
immense sacrifices that he had made in the restitution of liberty."

This villa was home to Simon Bolivar. Whenever he was not
campaigning and within Gran Colombia, he would ride there and
in the tranquil melancholy of the honeysuckle and the cedars he
would attempt to regain something of his lost self. And BOW with
Manuela here . . ,

Manuela saw, in the cold morning light, the great change that
had come over him. His thin, weathered face told of the days he
had spent in the open under the pitiless bum of the tropical sun.
The very elements had etched their glyphs into his face. His hair,
the thick black mop which he had combed in the romantic
Byronic style, now almost ashen, swept forward in ordered dis-
array as if it were wind-tossed. Manuela was shocked by his ap-
pearance. She tad always thought of him as at their first meeting
in 1822, when in a gold-embroidered uniform of sanguine red he
rode the streets of Quito in triumph on a white horse.

Now the lithe, once tireless body was used up. It was 1828,
and he was forty-five years of age, a moment which in the tropics
signals the sapping of vitality. Bolivar was a tired man physically
and mentally, even though his pen had not yet lost its vigor of
expression, or his voice the timbre of excitement. Still there were
dangerous signposts, warning signals which Manuela could easily
read. Twenty years of riding back and forth across the mountains
had destroyed his prodigious vitality. Bolivar was suddenly, pre-
maturely old.

His enemies, harvesting their planted hates, liked to put it all
on Manuela, saying that Samson succumbing to the wiles of a har-
ridan had at least regained enough of his strength to pull down
tis own wretched world upon himself. But this Bolivar could not
do, he lacked the strength*

The Dialectics of Lorn 185

"He is bewitched by La Saenz,"

Time had multiplied M anuela's powers, and she was persuaded
that if anything could save him, it was she. She made certain that
he was not bothered with trivialities. Many details^ since she had
fill knowledge of the politics, she handled herself. Visitors did
not always get to Bolivar directly, and his secretaries and herself
managed between to save his strength and his spleen. Al-

though he was often outraged by Manuela's ascendancy over him,
he allowed himself in these first weeks to be guided in many things
by her. As a matter of fact, the villa was efficiently, if inf onnally,
operated. Maria Luisa, an Indian woman whose numerous skirts
made her look like a tea cozy, was the cook. Petrona, as graceful
as a two-wheeled oxcart, swept through the rooms. Jose Palacios,
seemingly as indestructible as the Andes, served as always as the
general's valet and major-domo. This left Maxmela the time to act
as mistress of the chalet. She was remembered in this role by a
young Colombian;

I was received by one of the most attractive women that I could
remember; her complexion was pearl-white, the face oval; all her
salient features were handsome; eyes that carried one away, dy-
namic and commanding. There was too a luscious moistness about
her as if she just emerged from a bath spiced by fragrant verbena.
With flattering suavity, thanks to her servant Petrona who ar-
ranged her dress, she invited me to walk in the garden of the
Quinta, This grand lady was, in that gallant epoch, the animating
spirit of the house and of the villa of Bolivar.

They were often in the garden, strolling together through the
stands of Venezuelan pine which Bolivar had planted to remind
him of his boyhood home. When the sun warmed the thin air, they
would walk under a trellis enflowered with purple bougainvillea to
the swimming pool. It was built like the baths of Caligula, walled
by a high whitewashed barricade and filed with water, the color
of lapis lazuli when it relected the Bogotd sky. Above the pool
was the naked rock escarpment of the mountain. A small room, its
brick floor carpeted with woven rush, was Manuela's dressing

186 The Four Seasons of Manuela

room; beyond tie French doors of purple glass, the pool danced
invitingly. It became part of a sort of choreography of love the
walk, the confidences, the tingling sensation of the water, then
again the walk in the sunlight. The regimen imposed by Manuela
was having good effect; the chest-racking cough which Bolivar
tried always to smother was now less violent, and there was a
return of his good humor. As on the day when they brought him
a new gardener.

"My General, here is the gardener you have asked for.**

Bolivar dropped Manuela's arm and, with the good-natured
bantering she had long remembered as a part of him, he turned
to the old man. Recommended as a humble and honest man, he
had been summoned to the villa without being told the nature of
the audience. An old soldier, as anyone could see from the badly
mended blue greatcoat and the saber scar across the mouth, his
face was deeply lined and almost toothless if one overlooked the
two lonely incisors that pushed out his upper lip. He had fought
for the last Spanish Viceroy, and had been in Bogota the day the
courier brought in the startling news of Bolivar's overwhelming
victory at Boyaca. As much as he tried to disguise his speech, he
could not hide the accents that proclaimed him a godo. He had
done odd jobs about the city, keeping to himself, afraid that any
ill wind might flush him out and blow him to the gibbet When he
heard that he had been summoned to Bolivar, he was certain that
his luck had run out. He crossed himself three times and fell into
step behind the guard. Certain of his fate, he trembled as if palsied
before the Liberator and waited for what he thought would be the
sentence of death.

"Your name. 7 *

"Jose Maria Alvarez, a creature of Your Excellency's.**

**Where are you from?"

"Cartagena"

**You doirt have the appearance of a Cartagenian/* said Bolivar,
remembering that most of that Caribbean city's inhabitants had
Negro blood.

The Dialectics of Love 187

"I meant to say that 1 was bom in Cartagena of Levant," 7
"So then you are a royalist.**

"Senor," shouted the old soldier with concern and trembling,
"I am Spanish and republican. You see, Your Excellency, you see*
I was bom in the valley of Andorra which is a republic, my mother
was a Catalan who brought me "

"Enough,"* said Bolivar, holding up his index finger and wag-
ging it back and forth in front of the man's startled face. "Enough,
Are you married?**

"Not exactly/ 7 lie replied., happy over the change of subject
""That is, not exactly still the same as being married/'

**What is your occupation?"

"In my country, I was a fanner, a gardener/*

**Very well. You will have charge of the gardens of this Quinta,
that is, if you prove satisfactory /*

**By the Good Mary/* the Spaniard shouted, his eyes sparkling
with delight, "if the earth is good and there is plenty of fertilizer,
I will give you such cabbages and carrots as Your Excellency has
never eaten in his life/*

Bolivar threw back Ms head and laughed, putting Ms arm about
Manuela, delighted at Ms mixture of candor and arrogance. **Go
then, and you will be given all you need to produce this; and from
this day forward twenty pesos a month!'*

Jose Maria, who had never seen this amount at one time in Ms
whole life, dropped Ms hat and would have fallen at Bolivar's feet
to give Mm thanks. But Bolivar moved away, and Manuela turned
to the old man and said, *Vaya, he is not the lion that he is
painted.**

Bogot^ was not Lima. In this small city, wrapped in the folds of
the Andes, a deep religious feeling held society in strict conform-
ity to ancient mores. Here was none of Lima's gaiety, or its cos-
mopolitanism. Moreover, Bogoti was hostile to foreigners; its
conventions were absolute; and while Eros quested afield, as else-
where, his straying was covered by a thick veil of moral cant

188 The Four Seasons of Manuela

Bogota society was depressing and dull but it was the Bogota
way. And into its midst dropped Manuela.

Her reputation had preceded her Santander saw to that and
everyone expected the worst. She did not disappoint them. She
rode through the streets in her hussar's uniform, accompanied by
her fantastic slaves; her manners, like her speech, were extrava-
gant, imprudent, impetuous:

One day [a friend later recalled] while riding through the
streets of Bogota, she noticed a soldier carrying orders in a billet
placed, as it was customary, at the end of his rifle. Manuela gal-
loped down upon the poor foot soldier, grabbed the billet while
passing. The whole incident took only an instant. The soldier fired
at her; she reined in her horse, came about and replaced the billet
and rode off again; an act of folly.

It shocked Bogota society to see the Liberator-President riding
in an open landau (the only one in the city) with his mistress.
It angered many a woman in Bogota, with whom he had once had
casual affairs, that this Manuela should have triumphed over them
all. It enraged his political enemies that this hetaira, as they called
her, should have so great an ascendancy over him. Few knew
and few cared that Manuela had become a vital necessity to
him; that her passionate loyalty, her tenderness, her follies, her
calculated imprudences were all part of the fabric of his love
for her:

Your love revives a life that is expiring, I cannot live without
you. I cannot voluntarily renounce my Manuela.

She became the target for the barbs of his enemies; little scan-
dalinongering broadsides, called papeluchas, pilloried her merci-
lessly under a thin guise of objectivity. "This Madame du Barry/ 7
they called her; and they spent bottles of printers' ink in classical
allusions to the irreparable harm woman has done to man when
she has entered the arena of politics. And in their eyes most
damning of all they called her a foreigner.

* < Why/ 7 Manuela asked, "do they call those to the south of us
'brothers/ and why do they yet call me a f oreigner?**

The Dialectics of Love and Hate 189

This was the most polite of their epithets for her; but she flung
back at them all of their slack-jawed gossip, and soon everyone
who attacked her felt the nails of this amazon. It was only in the
quiet of the villa that she could escape the attacks.

Yet if Manuela could escape the personal assaults on her in the
isolation of the Quinta ? she could not escape politics. No one
could. Everyone's move in the city was dictated by politics. It ap-
peared at every function. It was discussed in every home, in every
street One began the day with it, and with it ended the night.
But politics no longer meant Bolivar's vision of a united South
America: it was regional politics, petty, partisan, intensely per-
sonal. Its heart was the struggle between Bolivar and Santander.
The whole of Gran Colombia was split into two violently opposed
political factions. There was no compromise; no way to bridge the
dichotomy.

The nation was bankrupt The treasury was empty, and Gran
Colombia was besieged by its creditors. Commerce was at a stand-
still. The plantations, which had flowered under Spanish rule, and
declined as a natural consequence of war, had fallen into decay.
Roads, which had once been maintained by the Crown, now were
but quagmires. Old soldiers were everywhere, diseased, miserable,
and penniless, with nothing more than unfilled promises of pay in
their tattered uniforms. Bolivar threw himself into economic battle
to relieve these strains. As in the old days, lie was indefatigable.
He preoccupied himself with customs duties, agriculture, educa-
tion, hospitals, slavery, soldiers* welfare. But behind his back his
opponents kept up a withering ire of invective. He wanted unity;
Ms political enemies in reply shouted "Liberty." He wanted a
new social contract; his adversaries, an implementing and perfect-
ing of the old,

The first small victory was Bolivar's. His draft of a new constitu-
tion was ready and a constitutional convention was convoked in
the little mountain town of Ocafia, miles from the poisonous atmos-
phere of Bogota* The agenda called for order; actually, as every-
one knew, it would be dhaos. The situation demanded a strong

190 The Four Seasons of

hand, And so ? In March 1828, off to the convention rode Bolivar,
racked with coughing as he was. He never arrived there. On the
way, things began to happen as he had feared. The disunity of
Gran Colombia had reawakened Spain, and her fleet was cruising
off the coast, seeking a place to land troops. Then, five hundred
miles to the north, a section of the army in the fortress-city of
Cartagena threatened revolt. Bolivar stopped at the little mountain
town of Bucaramanga and surveyed his political dilemma: "If I
go North, the South will disintegrate; if I go South, the North
will revolt. 9 *

So Bolivar, puzzled into hesitation, went nowhere at all. He
stayed in Bucaramanga., a strategic place from which to fly to any
point of the compass. And there he sat in hectic impotence., giving
over the direction of the Congress of Ocana to General OTL,eary.
It was he who read Bolivar's message to the convention in the
Church of St. Francis on April 2:

Without force there is no virtue; without virtue the state dies.
Anarchy destroys freedom, but unity preserves it Give us, gentle-
men, give us inexorable laws. ... If the convention does not
conduct itself with wisdom, and the people with prudence, there
will begin a civil war, and God alone knows where it will
end* . . .

The Convention began badly for Bolivar. His political enemies
were able to outvote him on almost every issue, article by article.
His new constitution was watered down until it began to lose all
the executive powers he thought to gain. He rejected as beneath
his dignity the idea of appearing himself at the convention to
influence the delegates* opinion. Then when he suddenly decided
to appear anyway,, his delegates this time screamed in one voice:
"Don't come, Your Excellency, your presence will be misunder-
stood/*

Bolivar alternated between going and staying. "I can't improve
things because I have no power to do so. I can't step over the
barriers of a constitution which I must uphold. I cannot change
the laws of our governmental system* I am not God > that I can

The Dialectics of Love 191

change men and matters, . . ? And lie threatened to resign, if the
convention did not give up its chess-like intrigues.

O'Leary, leading the fight ? swore in good Irish when he read
that letter, and his reply was forthright:

For God's sake, don't say in your letters that you are leaving
the country, even should that be your irrevocable decision, be-
cause it gives life and weapons to your enemies and works against
your good friends.

So Bolivar stayed in the village of Bucaramanga for the sixty
days of the convention, frustrated, angry, constantly bored. Dur-
ing the morning he would ride the countryside on Ms white horse,
Paloma Blanca, in the dress of a country gentleman white
woolen trousers strapped beneath polished Cordovan boots, blue
frock coat, and black stock, Ms tanned face hidden under a wide-
brimmed sugar planter's Panama, In the afternoon he would rest
in Ms hammock, or dictate to Ms secretaries. But when night
closed in, Ms anger would return to gall him. Too often, in these
days, Ms companions had to report, "The Liberator was in bad
humor.**

The sentence recurs in a diary of those sixty days. The pres-
ent being out of joint, Sim6n Bolivar returned to his past, and in
those periods of bad humor he reminisced with his French con-
fidant, Colonel Louis Peroux de Lacroix. He spun out stories of his
youth, Ms life in Paris when he had frequented the salons of the
great, kept a ballet dancer for a mistress, had a box at the opera,
and ridden the streets in an open gilt-painted landau, with lackeys
in powdered periwigs. He spun back time to the moment that he
possessed Fanny du Villars, replacing both her husband, a marshal
of France, and her lover, King Louis XVIII himself. Only recently
he had had a letter from this same Fanny: "After twenty-one
years . * my first love . . . yotir ring accompanies me. . . , Tel
me (but in your own hand) that yon still remember our love.* 5
And she had sent Mm a pastel portrait of herself.

Peroux de Lacroix was a picturesque ptcaro. A good 'Officer and
a loyal friend of Bolivar fond of Manttek, too Ms origins

192 The Four Seasons of Manuela

so obscure that one could not extricate them from Ms own con-
trived legends. He had been bom in France in 1781, and had
served with Napoleon's staff in the invasion of Russia. Later he left
for Stocldiolm with the Bemadottes, and was then sent to Eng-
land, presumably to spy upon Louis XVIII, who was being kept
there on diplomatic ice until he could be used against Napoleon.
Lacroix had the chameleon quality of a Talleyrand; instead of
spy, he became the monarch's confidant, so that when Napoleon
sank in his own contradictions, his former officer saved something
from the wreck. Soon he was operating a contraband fleet off the
coast of Colombia. In 1823 he was given a place in Bolivar's army.
Now he was part of the great cause, loyal and self-effacing.

But while Lacroix wrote down the rambling thoughts of his
general, the world of Bolivar was coming apart at the seams. The
convention continued badly. In the poisonous atmosphere of the
Church of St. Francis, the brain was stupefied, the ears set ham-
mering, the temples beat until all eyes were darkened with a veil
of blood. The political battle had sunk from ideas to personalities;
it had become a life-and-death struggle between Bolivar and San-
tander. They were not gods dwelling on Olympus, they were men
of human appetites. The opposition suspected Bolivar of wishing
to be a dictator, and in the midst of a debate on the language o
the constitution, his name was hissed with execrations.

Those wretched creatures/* said Bolivar, "even the air they
breathe, they owe to me . . . and they dare to suspect me."

Then Padilla revolted,

It had been in the Cartagena air for some time, and it was one
of the principal reasons why Bolivar had not moved from the
strategically placed village of Bucaramanga. Padilla was Santan-
der's man; his action suggested that, if the convention went badly
for the opposition, a military revolt would be the next step.

Padilla was a huge man; a mulatto, curly-pated and squint-
eyed. In the revolutionary wars he had been a hero; he had once
defeated a Spanish armada in a sea battle. Now he was confused

The Dialectics of Love 193

and restless; and he remained, as always, fearless and violent.
Sanguinary,, too. Once he suspected a fellow officer of using loaded
dice ? but he said nothing until the man reached out for the heap
of silver pesos. Then Padilla whipped out a knife, drove it through
the officer's hand into the table, and left -him wriggling like a trans-
fixed butterfly. Only recently he had publicly proclaimed his wife
who could stand no longer his amorous ferocity a whore. Now
he was in revolt. The United States Consul informed Henry Clay
of the affair:

This city has been for several days past in a state of alarm. The
dwellings of all inhabitants have been closed apprehensive of a
commencement of hostilities between the different factions. Gen-
eral Padilla, a man of colour, was the principle in the excitement.
He fled at midnight and proceeded toward Ocana ... for the
purpose of seeing Santander* who, it was said, was Ms adviser in
this recent affair.

So, to plague Bolivar when it was not Padilla, it was Paez,
and when it was not that simple-headed theophagist, then it was
Francisco de Paula Santander. All this provoked Manuela to write
Bolivar:

In the last mail, I said nothing about Cartagena so as not to
speak of disagreeable things; now I congratulate you because the
affair did not turn out as they had hoped. This is one thing San-
tander has done, not believing that he had done enough. If is for
this that we should kill Mm. I wish to God that all these devils on
two sticks, Paula [Santander], Padilla and Paez, would die. It will
be a great day for Colombia when these vermin are exterminated,
these and others who are sacrificing you with their foulness. It is
a most humane thought: That ten should die to save millions.

And soon Bolvar was writing her from Bticaramanga:

ApnlS 9 1828

GREETINGS:

I received, my dear Manuela, your three letters which have
fiHed me with a thousand affections. Each letter had its merit,
each its particular grace. One of your letters was very affection-

194 The Four Seasons of

ate and filled me with tenderness., the other amused me very much
by your sense of humor, and the third atoned for past and un-
merited injuries. To ail of them I reply with a word more eloquent
than your model filoise, I am going to return to Bogota. We shall
see each other soon. How does this strike you? Does it please you?
Well, my love, thus am I, who loves you with all his soul.

BOLIVAJR

In Colombia, Bolivar was perhaps the only one who loved Manu-
ela with aH his soul. Her detractors now were legion. The first
thing that women talked about when taking their morning choco-
late was Manuela's latest escapade. On the street men exchanged
pointed stories about her. Above all she was resented. The people
did not like the way money from the depleted treasury was spent
upon her. General Urdaneta often provided it:

MY DEAR GENERAL BOLTVAK:
Enclosed another letter from Manuelita. Colonel Barriga, the

paymaster, did not arrive with money for her, but she lacks not
for it, I gave it to her.

At night there were parties at the Quinta, where Manuela
dressed in the newest fashions. She had the latest magazines the
London Mail, Variedades and from them copied dresses which
were the envy of every woman of Bogota. When she appeared in
Hue velvet, with gold-bordered short train, short sleeves, and long
white Mdskin gloves from Paris, she was lashed by the tongues of
the ladies. To this Manuela reacted as always. With a flaunting dis-
regard of their social prejudices, she flung their own loose morals
back in their faces. At night, at the Qninta, in the company of the
British Legion or others from Bogota, she allowed her slave to
make a charade of the women of the city. "LokT Boussingault, a
French scientist living in Bogota, wrote home about it:

At night, Manuelita is metamorphosed; she feels, I believe, the
effects of a few glasses of port, of which she is very fond. She cer-
tainly wears rouge, her hair is artificially arranged and she has a
lot of animation and is gay, but she uses risque expressions.

The Dialectics of Loce 195

And of Jonotas ? her slave:

It must be said that Manuelita Is never separated from a young

slave, a mulatress with woolly hair, a strong-faced woman always
dressed as a soldier.

This JoBOtas is Manuelita's alter ego. A singular being, a come-
dian, a irst-class mimic who would be successful in the theater
anywhere. She has an amazing gift for imitation. She has an im-
passive face. As an actress she does the funniest things with im-
perturbable seriousness. I heard her mimic a monk preaching the
Passion; nothing could be more laughable. For nearly an hour she
held us under the spell of her eloquence* her gestures; the vocal
intonations of the monks were exactly given.

No one was spared. Every woman who had criticized Manuela
was mocked. Dona Teresa del Castillo y Rada, the wife of Boli-
var's Secretary of the Treasury (who looked like a turtle), made
ill-concealed reference to Manuela's sterility, was caricatured by
the actress-slave. **Very unbecoming and very imprudent,** said
the Frenchman. And Ana, wife of a member of the famous Pombo
family, was ridiculed as only Jonotas would vulgarly do it ... for
her inexhaustible fertility.

The talk got about No walls could conceal It. It reached the
ears of the Secretary of State, who was shocked at the slow dis-
integration of Bolivar's reputation. Jose Maria Restrepo was the
patriarch of the Restrepos, a powerful and fecund tribe from the
state of Antioquia. They were lawyers, traditionalists, and people
of honor. Don Jose had a severe countenance, with the curved
nose of a Sephardic Jew. He had guided Bolivar's foreign policy
through all the vicissitudes of the past years; but now he was
shaken by the accumulation of bitterness, and the extravagances
of Manuela, He vowed to Ms wife that the history of Colombia
which he was then writing would never mention the name of
Manuela. . , .

Life was becoming difficult,

There was dangerous talk of assassination, Manuela tad It from
Colonel William Fergusson, who rode In from seeing the General:

196 The Four Seasons of Manuela

His Excellency, separated from us, remained at a good distance
for more than an hour and a half, but we always kept Mm in our
sight, although he tried on more than one occasion to give us the
slip. When we returned he said:

*Tfou are guarding me as much as though you suspected a plot
upon my life. Tell me frankly, has someone written you from the
conventionF'

Seeing no one else answered, I took from under my military
coat a letter from O'Leary. He read it, raised his head and fixed
his eyes upon me:

TDo you all know about this letter?"

"Yes"

"Then/* continued Bolivar, "read here what Briceno has sent
me," and he handed us a letter. "I did not show this to anyone or
speak about it, but as I know of the same incident, you all might
as well know that O'Leary's fears are justified/*

Assassination! Then Simon Bolivar was really in danger of living
or dying his own Ides of March!

Manuela showed Fergusson some of tike latest papeluchas that
circulated in the city and in the Conductor y calling Bolivar a "ty-
rant, 7 * among other things; they aroused her to fury. She knew the
author. It was fierce-tempered Vicente Azuero, who mixed vitriol
with his printer's ink. His gray hair tad not given him the wisdom
of his years. Manuela decided to aid Mm in acquiring good judg-
ment; she sent a huge dark lancer out on Bogota^ street to begin
his education. This soldier met the elderly Azuero walking the
Gale de Comercio, distributing the day's calumnies against Boli-
var. The lancer knocked the old man spinning into the street, and
then with his high-heeled boots went to work on the pamphleteer's
face. Just then General Cordoba appeared. He was returning from
visiting his apple-cheeked fiancee, Fanny Henderson, when he saw
this Brobdingnagian creature in the act of kicking the old man
into insensibility, Cordoba drew his sword, backed the lancer to
the wall, and freed Azuero from death.

But before Cordoba could take action against Manuela, Fer-
gusson was personally wrecking the office of another scandal
sheet, called the Incombustible, He caught young Florentine

The Dialectics of Lote 197

Gonzalez in the very act of committing to type an abusive and

scathing attack OB Bolivar, calling for "the death of the tyrant."
There was more than politics here, for Gonzalez had married a dis-
carded mistress of Bolivar, tie lovely Bemardina. A letter known
to almost everyone had been written to her by the Liberator
**My adorable Bemardina . . . everything about you is love
you are everything in the world to me." Gonzalez deeply resented
Bolivar, but on the instant he transferred Ms hate to Fergusson.
The furious Irishman pounded Gonzalez until he was senseless,
then set about to make a shambles out of that printing press that
specialized in scandal.

The opposition, when they heard of it, thundered for Fergus-
son's head, and they demanded that Bolivar do something about it.
Simon Bolivar was doing something, but not precisely what the
opposition expected. He ordered Ms delegates, now in a political
minority at Ocaiia, to leave the convention; and thus, having no
quorum, the whole Congress dissolved. The delegates found that
their commissions had been retracted, and also that aH the deci-
sions of the Congress were disavowed. The army was called up,
Bolivar changed from civilian attire into military uniform, and he
ordered the office of Vice-President declared vacant. Then with
Ms troops he moved on Bogota.

**Now that the bull is out, we shall see who has the guts to take
it by the tail. 9 *

On July 18, in the great plaza in front of the Cathedral, facing
all of his generals bedizened with their medals, Bolivar took the
oath of office and assumed full dictatorial power over the Re-
public:

The good of the Republic does not consist in hateful dictator-
sMp. Dictatorship is glorious only when it seals the abyss of revo-
lution, but woe to a people that accustoms itself to live under
dictatorial rule.

Now, seeking no refuge in dissimulation, he moved with deter-
mination. He meant to end chaos. He took up official residence
at the Palace of San Carlos, and signed a series of decrees in an

198 The Four Seasons of

attempt to aid the economy of the country. He did not seek re-
venge; he merely wanted authority to bring an end to the political
anarchy., to heal the wounds of factional strife. Everything was to
be done with bienseance. A good face was to be put on the whole
procedure. So as to avoid public obloquy, Santander was selected
as the first minister to the United States of America. The country's
safety, its very existence, depended now on finesse, on how Boli-
var could quiet the storm of this troubled time. Meanwhile, he had
forgotten Manuela.

But she had not forgotten him. July 24 was his birthday, and
Manuela as mistress of the Quinta prepared the manor for the
celebrations. The outside of the building was festooned with flags,
and in the gardens food-covered tables were arranged "with be-
coming elegance/ 7 Bolivar did not attend, but members of his
Council did; and to give it official approval, a company of the
Granadero Battalion were sent to drill in front of the villa for the
guests. Manuela had her servants drag out barrels of chicha for
the soldiers, while within the Quinta the persons of quality drank
a heady port:

When the wine had taken its effects [said a participant] one of
the guests unfortunately mentioned the name of Santander. It had
the effect of a spark dropping into an open gunpowder cask. With
their tongues loosened, all guests let flow their invective upon the
man whom they believed to be the principal enemy of Bolivar.
In a still more unfortunate moment one of the guests proposed
that, following an old Spanish custom, they shoot Santander in
effigy.

Manuela took up the challenge. Jonotas dragged out a sack, they
stuffed it with old clothes, dressed it in a castoff officer's uniform,
put a bicornered hat on "Santander.** Manuela herself drew the
face of her enemy; somehow she got in the hauteur, the dark eyes,
the long moustachios. And if there was any lingering doubt as to
who it was, she painted a sign and hung it on the figure: Francisco
de Santander, killed for treason.

A squad of soldiers, beginning to feel now the effect of the

The Dialectics of Lote Hate 199

chicha, marched up in mock heroics pulled "Santander" along
to the gates, where he was propped up against the wall The Dean
of the Cathedral compromised the dignity of his cloth by giving
the effigy the last rites of the Church. Then came the turn of
Crofston.

Colonel Richard Crofston, of the British Legion, was as wild
an Irishman as Fergtisson, and as unpredictable as Manuela. It
was said he was having an affair with Jonotas "who wore the uni-
form of a man with her hair cut short but this did not stop
Richard Crofston from loving her, which she returned.**

Crofston ordered his adjutant to give the command to fire. In
the day's Irst lash of reason, the Colombian officer sheathed his
sword and said:

"I refuse, sir, to take part in this undignified farce.**

Crofston swore at him, placed him under arrest, and then, talc-
ing his sword, drew up the soldiers and gave the order to fire.

"Santander** disintegrated before the volley.

It was a shot heard aH around Bogota.

In one burst of irresponsibility Manuela had destroyed 'the care-
fully laid plans of Bolivar's policy. It was her old enemy Cordoba
who gave the details to the General. He wrote a bitterly frank let-
ter to the Liberator.

Alone in the cold of his residence, Bolivar paced the floor. All
through the afternoon his aides could hear the click-click of his
military boots as they struck the floor with the crispness of casta-
nets. Late in the afternoon of July 29, lie called in his secretary and
'dictated part of a letter; then in disgust lie rose, pulled the piece
of paper away from the surprised man, curtly dismissed Mm, and
sat down and wrote the message in his own hand:

MY DEAK GENERAL CQBDQBA:

You know that I fully understand what you have told me. Obvi-
ously I see, more clearly than anyone else, the calculated stupidi-
ties made by my friends. I am thinking seriously of suspending
Eidhard Crofston of the Granaderos and sending him away from

200 The Four Seasons of Manuela

this command to serve elsewhere. He alone is guilty. But then he
has a legal excuse, that it was not a public crime. StiU it was an
eminently despicable and a stupid one.

As for Manuela the lovable fool what would you want me
to say to you? You well know from times past how often I have
tried to separate myself from her. But this I have been unable to
do, for she is so stubborn. However, since this has happened I
shall have to use more detemiination and if need be force her to
leave the country or go where she will . , .

13

A NIGHT OF
SEP TEMBER

THE PLAZUELA BE SAN CABLOS had been built in the times of
Carlos IV, when Spain was still mistress of her fate and had un-
challenged possession of her kingdoms beyond the seas. The im-
print of the New World was upon it, even though its extended bal-
conies suggested the buildings of Valencia and it followed the
unsocial tendency of Burgos by hiding its patios behind massive
doors. Thus only its ugly postern was to be seen from the street.
The Plazuela the little plaza had been built about a small
park, where there was a large gurgling fountain; here the people
drew their water, and horses slaked their thirst. Around the foun-
tain, the two-storied buildings formed three parts of a square in
keeping with the spirit of the times and in obedience to good sense.
Below on the street, and around the square, rooms were rented
to merchants, "where the more fortunate, those in possession of
the correct emoluments, might shop without fear of being knocked
down by horsemen or swept into the streets by pack-loaded
Indians.

To those who had lived through the revolution, the Plazuela
remained a symbol of tie spirit of independence, for here on the
ground floor, in a secret room, the famous Antonio Narino had
printed, in 1794, the first Spanish translation of The Rights of Man.
It was a publication which launched the revolution, and sent
Naiino off to ten horrible years In a stinking North. African dun-
geon.

202 The Four Seasons of Manuela

On the second floor, running about the whole building, were
living quarters which shared the veranda and the balconies that
projected over the Plazuela. One apartment here had great advan-
tage; part of the balcony overhung the street, and from it one
could see the Palace of San Carlos where Bolivar lived, and in the
other direction the Calle de Cornercio, the principal street of com-
merce and promenade. San Ignacio, the church of the Jesuits, was
directly in front of it; from this balcony could be seen the elite of
Bogota as they attended their daily ministrations to God. Besides,
here one could listen to the latest gossip and see the latest fash-
ions. This was the heart of Bogota, especially designed for some-
one who wanted to be in on the very genesis of things.

In the first week of August, 1828, despite the dictum of Bolivar
that she be "removed from the public gaze/* Manuela Saenz tin-
kled thirty-two silver pesos into the hands of the patrician Senor
Don Pedro Lasso de la Vega, and received in return two huge iron
keys. She took possession of that apartment.

Bolivar received this news with icy disapprobation. Since the
"shooting" of Santander a profound estrangement had grown be-
tween him and Manuela. At first there had been violent scenes
between them not followed, as in the past, by delicious recon-
ciliations. Manuela remained splenetic and uncompromising. In
answer to his demands that she quit the capital, she reminded him
of what she had written when he had first asked her to come to
Mm; *. . . once I am there, do not afterward suggest that I return
to Quito/*

Well then, could she not alter the pattern of her strange be-
havior, could she not control these contradictions in her character,
these unbecoming gestures? Surely Manuela . , . but then, ex-
actly, this was Manuela. He must by now know her for what she
was a formidable character, who loved her friends and hated
her enemies*

And as to her political actions: one did not have to be a sibyl
to know that, if Bolivar did not do away with Santander and those
about Mm, they would kill him, in just the same manner as Caesar

A of 203

was killed. It was foolish to close one's eyes to It; what she said,
what she did, was the only course of action in a country divided
against itself. Half measures were always repugnant to her; only
harm could be caused by things half said, things half done. And
as for the chaos of the moment, those revolutionaries in France had
had the right answer more than thirty years ago the Anointed
Terror. Thus Manuela.

And so, sweeping along the reluctant Pepe Paris, she began the
acquisition of things for her apartment. There were gilded mirrors
crowned with the fashionable Empire eagle; sofas covered with
blood-red damask, recently imported from France; china from
England and glassware from Philadelphia, very rare and exceed-
ingly expensive. The wines, the brandies, the sherries, she got
through her friendship with members of the British Legion. Thus
equipped, Manuela settled down that is, as much as she could
ever settle down with her menage of slaves and servants and
hangers-on.

And her animals. She was fond of all animals, especially cats,
who roamed the house in bewildering numbers. And to add to the
confusion, someone brought her a spectacled bear cub, a black
bear with eyes encircled by round patches of white fur, giving it
its "spectacles.** It soon became Manuela's favorite. Lolo Boussin-
gault wrote home, explaining this strange world where he lived:

Manuela adores animals. She has a bear cub which Is impossi-
ble, it has the entire run of the house. The nasty beast likes to play
with all the visitors, but if you pat him he wiH scratch at your
hands terribly, or cling to your legs so firmly it is difficult to extri-
cate yourself.

One morning I paid Manuelita a call. As she wasn't yet up, I
had to go into her bedroom. I saw a terrible scene, The little bear
was stretched out on his mistress, his horrible claws resting on
her breasts. Seeing me there, Manuelita spoke to me with great
calm: TDon Juan, go to the kitchen and bring me a bowl of milk.
This devilish bear wffl not let me go. 3 *

I got the milk. The bear slowly let go of Manuela, crawled
down to drink After that* calling Coxe* an Englishman, we

204 The Four Seasons of Manuela

chained tie bear ? whom we pulled down, growling, into the court-
yard. Coxe then executed him.

"But see/' Manuelita said, showing me her throat and part of
her breasts, **! am not wounded."

In her own way Manuela was playing her role. She kept her
eyes and ears open, and with her sense of the drift of feelings and
opinions, she was once more an intelligence center. In the morn-
ings, her slaves would go to the market, ostensibly to gather the
day's food; actually they were listening to the mood of the people.
Jonotas, with her experience in Lima and Quito, had no trouble in
ferreting out, from w T omen, soldiers, and the lower echelons of
Bogota society, all of the complaints and the rumors. Then, with
little dark Isabela balancing a vegetable-filled basket on her head,
she would come back to the Plazuela and bring to her mistress the
whole of the day's harvest. In the morning hours, Manuela could
be seen on the balcony that overhung the street in front of the
church of the Jesuits. From this vantage point she watched the
building where Simon Bolivar lived, and she could take in an edge
of the plaza. There were few movements that her fine brown eyes
did not see:

Manuelita is always visible. In the morning she wears a negli-
gee which is not without attraction; her arms are naked she
makes sure not to hide them; she embroiders while showing the
prettiest fingers in the world. She talks a little and smokes dga-
rillos with lovely grace. Her behavior at this time of day is modest.
She gives and welcomes news.

Then at night it was the tertulias. Manuela had altered this
ancient Spanish custom, an informal party for conversation. She
served spirits, strong and heady wines. There in her apartment,
beneath the dancing light of the cut-glass candelabra, she would
hold her salon. She was radiant in an off-shoulder white muslin
gown with the waistline tucked high under her breasts, and a scarf
about her shoulders, poppy-red with scalloped edgings. For night
also she brought a change of mood, to animation and gaiety.

These tertulias were in essence political rallies. The friends of

A Night of

Bolivar came; so did the members of the British Legion Fergus-
son, OTLeary, Sandes, Dr. Moore and others of Bogota's society
who had cast their own lives in the crucible of Bolivar's destiny.
Young Boussingault, who headed a mission of French scientists
and was destined to be one day the president of the Academie des
Sciences in Paris, witnessed all this with wondering eyes. Much
of it he reported home in his letters:

Like all favorites of powerful political men, Manuela attracts
courtiers. Her courtesies and her generosities are, as a matter of
fact, inexhaustible.

Manuela was developing her role. She was, at these tertulias,
influencing the opinions of men who were important to Simon
Bolivar. For beneath her "follies* there was something else. Boli-
var might speak of her as his 'lovable fool/' and her enemies might
call her many harsher names, but they realized, all too late, that
they had misjudged her. The strange apparatus of her extravagant
behavior was only an incredible f aade to hide her real intentions,
her political manipulations for Simon Bolivar's ideals. Although
she was a handsome, self-possessed woman, still her charm was
inferior to her talents; and the combination of the two was insur-
mountable. Manuela was very astute. Her notorious "follies* were
only occasional, and beyond the gaudy display of her baroque
personality she demonstrated her ability at political intrigue in a
hundred ways.

There was a pattern in public behavior. Manuela could see it
through all the news that poured in upon her. It was now an open
secret: there was an organized conspiracy directed against Bolivar.
It weled up from the lowest rungs of society, into the salons of the
intellectuals. The unpaid* grumbling soldiers were being influ-
enced. The women, complaining about the high cost of food, were
being told that aH the fault emanated from Bolivar and his policies.
The merchants groaned over the decay of their business; the aris-
tocracy over their loss of privilege; the intelligentsia over the re-
straints of the dictatorship. Out of these regiments of the discon-

206 The Four Seasons of Manuel^

tented was developing the army of revolt; and with it, a shib-
boleth: "There is no liberty as long as Bolivar Mves."

Manuela sensed it, and spilled out her warnings like a Cas-
sandra. She begged Bolivar not to travel without an armed escort;
he refused. His officers insisted that they be given authority to
ferret out the conspirators; he denied them this. He wanted less
dictatorial decrees, not more. He felt that he must concentrate on
the economic rehabilitation of the country, since this, if accom-
plished, would put to rest most of the complaints. It was only
when the voice of Pepe Paris joined the others in the Council,
urging him for his safety to discontinue his daily horseback rides,
that he felt the seriousness of the moment. He doubled the palace
guard. Jose Palacios brought his two great mastiffs from the Quinta
to reinforce the sentries. These were, however, the only precau-
tions that Bolivar would allow.

The names of some of the conspirators were even known. As
yet they had taken no steps beyond careless talk, the sort of gran-
diose talk which comes when chicha loosens the tongue, without
revealing any definite form of action. One thing, however, was
certain: General Santander was the nucleus of the conspiracy; it
whirled around his arrogant personality. Although he had been
appointed Minister to the United States in the beginning of the
month, he had so far made no preparation to go. Now Bolivar or-
dered, in a tone which certainly did not belong to the language of
diplomacy, "General Santander will leave the country by Septem-
ber 5th."

This decision hurried up the plans for revolt. Bolivar was to be
murdered at the Masked Bal.

It was a normal August night in Bogota. The rain fell lightly yet
insistently. The cobblestone streets glistened pallidly from the
small lights which people, by law, now placed in front of their
houses. Across from the Palace of San Carlos was the Coloseo Thea-
ter, a three-storied building, simple and elegant. It was the one
theater of Bogota, copied after the Variete in Paris; but since there

A Night of 207

were no professionals, the actors were only amateurs drawn from
those of talent within the city. The interior was candle-lit, the hall
empty of seats for everyone brought his own for a performance.
On this night the large hall was lined with chairs brought by the
servants, and an orchestra a harp, two violins, a cello and a bat-
tered horn was squeaking out the first strains of a Spanish
contredanse. Soon, under the spell of wine and enlivening spirits,
they would change to a local dance, the cachucha, danced like the
minuet, but with the sinuous body movements of a bolero.

The masked bal was popular in Bogota. In this city of few
amusements, it furnished to the women, experts with the needle,
an excuse to fashion costumes of considerable ingenuity. It also
allowed them to carry on, under the disguise, the love affairs
which they could not have openly in the small, circumscribed so-
ciety of the town. The hall was already filled when Manuela ar-
rived. She had suggested that Bolivar should not come, for she had
had it from a servant, who had it from someone else, that an at-
tempt would be made on his life that night Unmasked and still
wearing her hussar's uniform, she had gone to the hall without
calling at the Palace. In the blaze of costumes about the entrance,
and in the dimly lighted foyer, she passed unnoticed, since it was
presumed she was in costume. She mounted the stairs behind
Marcelo Tenorio, a man of some distinction. Then she saw him
accosted on the stairway by another man, costumed as a Spanish
conquistador, in a simulated coat of mail. When Tenorio was be-
side him, the man lifted his visor and said:

*TDo you know me? ?>

Tenorio kept silent.

'Within a half hour, when the clock strikes twelve death to
the tyrant.*"

And the man opened his doublet, on which was painted the ris-
ing sun, and showed a knife stack in Ms belt

"We are twelve," he said enigmatically. tf< The result: silence "

Manuela, unaware if Bolivar had arrived yet or not, made her
way to the entrance of the theater, within which tibe masked

208 The Four Seasons of Manuela

dancers were going through the first steps of the cachucha. The
Mayor of the city, Don Ventura, dressed in short satin knee
breeches, stood by the door. He saw a woman dressed as a hussar
about to pass, her eyes searching beyond him for the figure of
Bolivar. He barred the way.

"But I am Manuela Saenz/' she said.

"I don't care/* he replied, "if you are Saint Manuela. You can't
enter here in men's clothing/*

No one spoke quite that way to Manuela., and she began at once
to raise a disturbance. At that very moment Bolivar had arrived
with Colonel Fergusson and General Cordoba; they were at the
outer door speaking with some of the officials. Near them, waiting
as usual for her mistress, was Jonotas, disheveled and dirty. The
combination of Manuela arguing with the Mayor of the city, and
the filthily disarranged Jonotas, was too much for the frayed
nerved of Bolivar.

"Is this really the slave of Manuela?'*

"Yes, my General,** answered Fergusson.

"This { is insufferable/* And, pushing Jonot&s aside, he moved
toward the street

General Cordoba, wrapped in a blue Spanish cape, made after
him. f ; ;

"Youf are going, my General?'*

**Yes and I go away very disgusted. Accompany me/*

Lat^r and alone in the falling rain, Manuela made her way back
to her (apartment.
I

Thb nadir of their relationship had now been reached. Bolivar
made no attempt at communication, so that she was certain he mis-
understood her presence that night at the Masked Ball, He was not
convinced that the people would attempt his life; he considered
himself invulnerable to such attacks; therefore Manuela's vulgar
display was inexplicable. She remained in torment at their
estrangement, and from the depths of that misery she wrote him
a short note:

A Night of 209

SIB:

I know you are vexed with me, but it was not my fault. With
the pain of this displeasure upon me, I can scarcely sleep. How-
ever this much remains certain. I will not come to your house,
until you ask for me, or want to see me.

Even the arrival of Fernando Bolivar failed to break down the
wall between them. Manuela bad hurried over to the Palace of San
Carlos as soon as she heard lie had come in order to be o aid, for
she knew the great affection in which Bolivar held this favorite
nephew.

Fernando Bolivar had arrived unexpectedly. He had ridden in
from Caracas, twenty-four days in the saddle, crossing the anemic
llanos, climbing over the Andes, to reach Bogota. He had been
briefed on Ms long ride by Jose Ravenga, one of the Ministers of
Council, but he did not expect to see wbat he did see. He had
come at once from the United States when lie received the mes-
sage from Simon Bolivar: he was needed. Although he was young,
his education in North. America, Ms knowledge of events, were
important now to Gran Colombia. What Ms Uncle Simon did not
mention was that, in this crescendo of bate and terror, he had
desperate need of people wbo because of blood ties would give
him unquestioned loyalty.

And who better than Fernando? The son of Ms favorite sister,
Maria Antonia > bom in Caracas in 1810, Bolivar had sent him to
PMladelpMa for Ms education. He was studying at Gerxoantown
Academy when the Marquis de La Fayette made his much-
heralded return to the United States, and the old General made
the journey out to Germantown just to be presented to the nephew
of Simon Bolivar. So great was the prestige of his uncle that on
his graduation he was offered an appointment to West Point. TMs
he refused, wishing to attend Jefferson's college in Virginia. It was
the year 1826, the year that Thomas Jefferson would die, yet the
venerable statesman came out personally to install the nepbew of
Bolivar in Ms own college. In North America, as throughout Eu-
rope, Simon Bolivar was respected as one of the great men of the

210 The Four Seasons of Manuela

century; everywhere. It seemed, the name of Bolivar was held in
great esteem.

But on his homecoming Fernando Bolivar was shocked by the
reality. In Venezuela the name of Bolivar was hissed. All along
the two thousand miles that separated Caracas from Bogota, the
young Bolivar could see the elements of chaos. Bogota itself was
an armed camp; he could not escape the feeling of tension that
gripped the city. Fernando tried not to show his reactions to the
situation, but his face was too open to dissemble the things he
felt. It was a handsome face, with sharp, clean-cut features; his
hair, slightly curly, was parted on one side in a sort of coup de
vent; Ms body, something like that of Simon Bolivar, was delicate,
lithe, almost epicene.

Installed in the Palace of San Carlos, he was writing by Sep-
tember 17 to friends in Philadelphia, describing his new home:

It is a house, two stories high, built with good taste and luxuri-
ously furnished. In the patio is a beautiful fountain, surrounded
by a garden filled with flowers, abundant with roses and above a!
with carnations which grow superbly in this climate. The prin-
cipal patio is enclosed with an iron railing; the arrangement on
the second floe" is different in that it has only a corridor which
leads to the dining room and the interior room occupied by my
uncle. On the street side (bounded by the Jesuit church) there
are five rooms of varying size; the first one being where the
Council of Ministers meets. The last one, a luxuriously papered
room, serves as a dormitory. Here there is a superbly fashioned
matrimonial bed; I sleep here with my friend Lieutenant Andres
Ibarra, who is an aide to my uncle.

Fernando Bolivar met Fergusson and Wilson, with whom he
could converse in English; Juan Santana, also American-educated,
"who could speak various languages'*; and, of course, Manuela
Saenz whose special relationship with his uncle, as well as with
the state, he soon knew and accepted. "I encountered here,** he
said, "something resembling the air of a family.'*

The Palace had also the air of war. Anyone approaching the
building was given a scrutiny unknown in the past, and Jose

A Night of 211

Palacios's two animals, "beautiful clogs, one bay-colored, the other
ruddy/' roamed about the gardens alert to all sounds. There was
added tension, for word had just come from Bolivia ( it took over
five months to arrive ) that there had been a revolution there. Gen-
eral Sucre had been wounded in the face and arm, and had re-
signed under pressure. He was now riding back to Quito. This
intelligence only exacerbated the nerves of those who stayed
about Bolivar's person; for rumors that the conspiracy against the
government was set, even to the time and place, grew with each
succeeding day. Santander, who had been ordered to leave Bogota
by September 5 "one way or another," was still there, outwardly
preserving complete ignorance. But he was well informed, . . .

The basic plan to assassinate Simon Bolivar, to seize the gov-
ernment had been well worked out. Yet it was like all conspira-
cies formed by a motley group of plotters; all had different ideas
of what they wanted. Still, for the moment, they could agree. The
first step was obvious to kill.

Lolo Boussingault observed it all, and understood it, for as a
Frenchman he had been nurtured on violence, and knew some-
thing of revolution's characteristics. He wrote home:

The royalist party is conspiring actively; nocturnal reunions
take place regularly at the homes of well-placed people; no one
seeks to conceal anything. The police have been instructed to ar-
rest the conspirators,, but they do nothing. They are conspiring
for liberty. This is their excuse as well as their strength, al-
though in fact with many of them there is more ambition involved
than patriotism. The most active group are young students, who
meet on the pretense of studying with several of the professors of
the college of San Bartolomeo, who are also involved. Its secret
aim is to overthrow Bolivar's government I know this since it is
directed by a very old Frenchman, Dr. ArganH, one of the sans-
culottes of Marseilles and the French Revolution, and by another
intelligent Frenchman, Auguste Honnet, and too, by an officer of
Venezuela named Pedro Carujo.

The conspiracy was conceived in the romantic tradition. Like
Charlotte Corday, who knifed Marat in his bath *f or liberty,*' most

212 The Four Seasons of Manuela

of the conspirators were young, scarcely twenty. Among them
were Vargas Tejada, an Idealist incapable of killing even a cock-
roach; Florentine Gonzalez, a literary figure; Ospina, a student of
philosophy. Yet it derived something of a classical touch from its
leader, old Dr. Arganil, a mysterious figure who had been swept
up to America's shores by the spindrift of the revolution in which
he had lent a hand. They had no idea how they would proceed
to bind the outlying provinces to their government; that rested
presumably with Santander; it was talked of in romantic terms.
Yet they had to have military men to swing the army; they found
them in the turncoat Colonel Ramon Guerrera of Bolivar's staff,
and in another traitor, Major Pedro Carujo. A bellicose soldier
five feet tall, red-headed, he was Spanish-born. In the wars, he
had fought at first with fanatic loyalty for the Spaniard; then he
went over to Bolivar after the republican victory.

The uprising was planned for October 28, the day of St. Simon,
Bolivar's patron saint. In the midst of the celebrations they would
strike: Bolivar, Urdaneta, Manuela, and others were marked for
death. All was in readiness. Instead of which . . .

Instead of which, it all happened unexpectedly. On the after-
noon of September 25, a Captain Triana stumbled into his bar-
racks, as drunk as Bacchus. He bumped into another officer. They
quarreled. Then Triana drew his sword, mounted a table and
shouted at the top of his lungs, "The time has come to drown the
tyranny of Bolivar in oceans of blood."

The incident was reported, the Captain jailed, and the informa-
tion brought to Bolivar. Colonel Ramon Guerrera, knowing that
this drunken talk had opened the secret of the conspiracy, im-
mediately made contact with Major Carujo; they had to act with
great speed. The conspirators were summoned to meet at once at
the home of Luis Vargas Tejada, in the parish of Santa Barbara.
It was no small gathering on that night of infamy, with a member
of the general staff plotting Bolivar's death with others. They knew
not what they were planning and had no idea beyond the murder,
apart from asking Santander to aid them in the formation of a new

A of 213

government. And Bolivar thought that the revolt was
and that they would f aU like rats into a trap.

Santander, although he was not physically present at the meet-
ing, did not reject the idea of conspiracy or of murder; neither did
he inform the authorities. Perhaps, as he sat alone in Ms dimly
lighted house, conspicuous so that he would be seen by the two
soldiers who watched the door, he thought of himself as some
demiurge who would descend from a new Olympus when the
conspiracy had dispatched Bolivar, to respond to the call of
the people, to rule them, despite the blood on his hands., under
the cold beauty of the Law. . . .

The conspirators were now thirty. It was agreed that they must
strike that night. All other plans must go into discard. They were
to be formed into three groups. Those led by the little gamecock
Pedro Carujo would assault the palace and kill Bolivar. Colonel
Guerrera, aided by other military men, would reduce the Vargas
Battalion to impotency and release Padilla, who languished in a
cell close by. The third group would hold itself in readiness to
come to the aid of either of the other two.

A night of September.

It had rained all the afternoon of the 25th, it was almost freez-
ing; the cold penetrated the unheated houses, leaving a bone-
shaking chill over everything. The rain had stopped in the evening,
the clouds broke and streamed away, and at nightfall the full
moon rose; it was almost as bright as day.

Jose Palacios, his massive body silhouetted against the shadows,
came to Manuela*s apartment accompanied by his two monstrous
dogs. He carried a message from his master: *1 am suffering with
a terrible headache, please come to me now.**

Manuela, in a pique over the long neglect, answered, TTell His
Excellency that I am more ill than he is, and I should not come."

Jose Palacios left, yet was back at once* Hie request was urgent

TPlease come.**

As the street was still damp with rain, Manuela put a pair of
double-soled rubber boots over her satin slippers, wrapped a warm

214 The Four Seasons of Manuela

caslimere scarf about her neck, and crossed the street to the
Palace, with Jonotas in attendance as always. She entered the door
between the guards, climbed the stairs and went into Bolivar's
room without knocking. He was sitting in a warm bath. After
greeting her and telling her how delighted he was that she came,
he said, "There is to be a revolution."

"I know it. I am glad that yon had notice of it in good time. You
never believe my information and yon always received my sugges-
tions unfavorably.'*

Still, he had not taken too many precautions. The guard had
been doubled, the officers in the barracks altered, and by his bed
Bolivar had his sword and pistols.

He asked Manuela to read to him, and soon he grew sleepy.
Tenderly she helped him to bed. Then, candle in hand > she went
to the room that was hers when she visited him.

The silence of Bogota was like a stagnant pool. In the distance
came the cry of the sereno, "Ave Maria. Twelve o*clock and all is
well . . ?

And now at midnight, going in twos and threes so as not to
arouse suspicion., the first group of conspirators gathered at the
Bridge of San Agustin. Then, through the silent streets, light-
slashed only here and there as the moon cut through the ink-black
shadows, they approached their goal. In the Plazuela de San
Carlos, below Manuela's apartment, they paused to arm them-
selves with sabers and pistols, thoughtfully taken from the bar-
racks by Major Carujo. Then they moved on the Palace of San
Carlos.

But at that moment, seeing the dark forms come out of the
night, one of the sentries half raised Ms rifle and challenged:

"Who lives?"

He had expected the usual response, "The Liberator.** Instead,
Major Carujo shouted "Liberty." His followers seized the sentries,
bent back their necks; knives flashed in the moonlight, and in a
moment the guards lay drowning in their own blood. Now the

A Night of

killers forced open the doors debouclied the

hallways to search out Bolivar, Their clatter waked the dogs,
who set up a barking; the household was aroused. Young Andres
Ibarra was the first to oppose them. He had hastily slipped into
his military jacket and seized a weapon; he met some of the con-
spirators coining up the stairs. Struck from behind, he dropped his
saber and slowly sank to the floor, trying In his few moments of
consciousness to stanch the flow of Ms blood.

Manuela, too, hearing the dogs and the commotion, ran to
Bolivar's room and awakened him. He was up in a moment. His
pistol in one hand, his sword in the other, he moved toward the
door. Manuela burst out laughing.

"Can you imagine wanting to defend yourself in that attire!
In your nightshirt,, with a rapier In hand? Don Quixote in person.
Put on your uniform. 9 *

Bolivar was dressed In a moment,

"Bravo, I am dressed, what do we do now?**

They could hear the commotion throughout the Palace, the
barking of the dogs, the sound of firing, confused shouts: "Where
is the tyrant?" "Death to Bolivar!" "Long live Liberty!"

Manuela made Bolivar put on her double-soled rubber boots,
and flung a cape over him; then, picking up his sword, she looked
out the door, tiptoed back to Mm, and whispered, "Don't you
remember telling me that Pepe Paris said that this window which
opens on the street might be a good place to escape from?'*

With that she quietly raised the window. There was no one to
be seen. It was a short nine-foot drop to the street

f 9>

Jump.

He leaped to the window, turned to embrace Manuela, and let
himself down. She waited, her heart beating louder than the sound
of his footsteps as he ran toward the bridge over the river. Then,
sword in hand, she turned to the door. The conspirators burst into
the room.

"Where is BoKvar?"

"In the council room.**

216 The Four Seasons of Manuela

"And the open window, why is the window opened? Has he
escaped?"

"No. He is in the council room. I opened the window only to
see what the commotion was about."

They seized her, knocked the saber from her hand, and pushed
her before them to the council room. It was empty. The conspira-
tors began to grow desperate. They searched the council room,
Bolivar's bedroom, the kitchen, the salon; the Liberator was not
to be found. Manuela, smiling coldly as she watched them, had
just time to whisper to Jose Palacios. In a moment he was lost in
the shadows; then he sped after his master.

Soon the killers returned to Manuela. They marched her before
them, a saber at her back, while she counted the minutes. Each
moment that passed without their discovering Simon Bolivar
made more certain the failure of the plot; and by now, she knew
he had gained the bridge. There were shots at the barracks, the
sound of a cannon being fired at close range, and small arms too.
Candle lights were flickering up all over the city; the surprise ele-
ment of the conspiracy, at least, had failed.

As Manuela was swept across the crimson-stained floor, she saw
Ibarra lying in an ever-widening circle of blood. Pushing aside
her guards, she knelt down beside him, ripped off her petticoat,
bandaged the wound, and put a tourniquet about his arm. Ibarra
opened his eyes and asked weakly, "Is the Liberator dead?"

"No, Ibarra, he is alive/*

Manuela was overheard. Now she got off the floor and flung at
them defiantly, "Yes, Bolivar is alive/*

One of her captors struck at her. His fist slashed her in the ear
and she fell forward. Everyone crowded about her with knives
raised, while from the floor she screamed defiance.

"Go on, kill me, kill me, you miserable cowards.**

Auguste Hormet, the Frenchman, jumped between the knives
and threw up his arms.

"Stop it, we are not here to murder women. 9 *

But Major Carajo, full of resentment toward anyone that

A Night of 217

towered over his five feet, aimed a kick at the prostrate Manuela;
it grazed her shoulder and struck her head. Then they picked her
up, shoved her into Bolivar's room, locked the door and placed
a guard before it. No one paid attention to her head wound.

"Long, long afterward/" wrote Boussingault, < you could see the
imprint of the blow on M anuelita's f orehead. 5 *

The sound of someone running brought Manuela to the window,
the same window from which, only moments bef ore, Simon Bolivar
had slipped out to escape the trap. It was Colonel Fergusson.
Half dressed, with drawn saber, he was running toward the en-
trance of the Palace. Manuela shouted to him. He stopped.

"Where is the Liberator? 7 *

But Manuela could not answer because of the guard at her door.
She put her finger to her lips, nodding and trying to indicate with-
out saying it that Simon Bolivar had escaped. Fergusson moved
toward the entrance.

"Don't/* Manuela shouted to him. ""Don't come in. They will
kill you."

Caution was not one of William Fergusson*s virtues. He rushed
to the door and ran right into the man he had once chastised.
Major Canijo raised his pistol, and fired at point-blank range right
into the Irishman's face. Fergusson dropped his saber and threw
up his hands over a geyser of blood. His knees buckled. Even then
Canijo picked up the saber and slashed him with it. But there was
no need. Fergusson was dead before he fell to the floor.

Bogota was now aroused. All that had occurred took precisely
ten minutes. In the rapidly moving drama, the plotters were
unable to communicate with each other; they were blinded now
by the terror of having failed. One party of them had seized some
artillery pieces, trained them on the barracks, and started firing
into the headquarters of the Vargas Battalion. Colonel Charles
Whittle, commander of the battalion, who had seen service at
Waterloo,, stood in full view of the firing. He held a brace of pistols,
and he promised to blow out the brains of any of his soldiers who
surrendered. Then he directed his snipers to pick off those who

218 The Four Seasons of Manuela

were firing the cannon. The marksmen did their work well. Soon
the dead lay in strange postures around the piece; the others led.
Boussingault, an eyewitness to it, said, "It was due to the Vargas
Battalion, and especially to Colonel Whittle, its commander, that
the plot failed; a brave and excellent officer."

By now, fearing the worst, all of Bolivar's officers were con-
verging on the Palace. Dr. Moore helped Manuela, and Jonotas
dragged the body of Fergusson inside. Fernando Bolivar was
covered with blood from trying to stanch Fergusson's wounds.
He was shaken terribly by these events, he seemed paler and more
fragile than ever.

Soon General Urdaneta arrived with a body of troops. They
found Fergusson dead, the sentries with their throats cut. Ibarra
was as pale as death, but, thanks to Manuela's timely aid, alive.
Manuela leaned against the side of the door, her head bruised, a
hand bleeding, "her dress ripped . . ,

The first question everyone asked was, "Where is Bolivar?"

Where was he? At the moment he was hiding under a bridge, his
legs sunk in the stinking cloacina exuviae of the river. After he had
jumped from the window, he ran past the theater, the Coloseo,
keeping to the shadows. Hearing footsteps, he crouched down,
pistol in hand; but he soon made out the huge frame of Jose
Palacios. They both ran for the Carmen Viaduct that bridged the
San Agustin River, hoping to escape into the suburbs; but hearing
voices in the night coming from the other side, they slid down
under the bridge, and there crouched knee-deep in the water that
contained the sewage of Bogota.

Together they sat and waited the unquestioning, devoted
Jose, the freed slave., who could neither read nor write and
Simon Bolivar, who had liberated half a continent. He had given
his fortune, his energies and his health for the cause of liberty. He
had been, only a few years back, the idol of the continent^ the toast
of Europe, the spiritual successor of George Washington. Poets
had sung his praises, and men had cast aside all their private hopes
to follow his bright star. Now the wheel of Ms fate had made the

A of 219

full circle. He sat in torment, trembling with ague, in the

cold of the night. The terrible events on that night of September
had struck him a fearful How,

"I am mortally wounded," he said, "their daggers have pene-
trated my heart/*

It was a wound for which there was no sovereign balm. Some-

o

thing in him died that night; his prodigious vanity was shattered,
his enemies had planted their flags in the ruins of his hopes. Even
now, with all the sounds of firing, he had no idea of what was
occurring. Perhaps the conspirators had been successful.

Then they heard more shouting. His soldiers were looking for
him with the welcome ralying cry of "Long live the Liberator!'"

Simon Bolivar crawled out of the lowing cesspool, embraced
the men, commanded a horse, and quickly went to the barracks
where he changed into a clean uniform. Then he rode out to the
plaza.

The efficient General Urdaneta had things in hand. Hundreds of
suspects had already been arrested; they stood to one side,
manacled and dispirited. The entire Bogota garrison was drawn
up in the square and they spontaneously broke into a cheer when
they saw him ride up.

Everyone could see how these events had affected Bolivar;
those hours under the bridge had corroded his soul. He spoke in a
hoarse voice, as hollow as if he spoke from the tomb. Simply, elo-
quently, he thanked them for their loyalty. Then, one by one, all
his generals rode up to offer congratulations. When Santander
offered his hand,, Bolivar cut him down in brittle contempt.

"As usually happens in unsuccessful revolts, 9 * observed Bous-
singault from his fine observation seat, "the undecided and
there were many pronounced themselves for the victor. I have
known several who behaved this way, among others the Vice-
President of the Republic General Santander .**

Now Bolivar made his way back to the residence- The sky was
beginning to lighten and sweep away the darkness. The streets
were lined with people with candle lamps, cheering their Hbera-

220 The Four Seasons of Manuel,

tor-President. AH his intimates were waiting for him. Fernando
Bolivar, still smeared with blood, always remembered that hour:

It was five in the morning, perhaps it was four; however, as
much as I would forget the impressions of that unfortunate night,
I remember them as if they were yesterday.

Then Bolivar saw Manuela. He was too dazed by events to see
her injuries, the bruised head, the cut hand. In the sight of every-
one, he embraced her, and profoundly moved, said:

**Manuela, my Manuela, you are the liberatress of the Liberator/*

Manuela had kept herself well under control. There could be
no letting go now, for she could see the terrible agitation in Simon
Bolivar. She followed him to his room, helped him to undress.
He tried to lie down and rest. He could not. He sprang up, began
to pace the room.

"Tel me what happened, yes, all, everything. 9 *

But before she could start the narrative, he interrupted, "Don't
tell me more."

Then almost in the same breath, he asked again for the fearful
details.

Thus in the morning of September 26 did the day of wrath break
across the horizon.

14
DANSE MACABRE

A SIMPLE GALLOWS was being raised in the great square directly
in front o the Cathedral, for lie time had not been allowed the
public hangman to prepare an elaborate gibbet. It worried him a
good deal, and he complained loudly about it when the crossbar
was put into place. Next he hung several stout ropes from which,
if God willed it, would soon dangle the bodies of those who had
the misfortune to fail. The first hangings had been routine simple
soldiers who had taken part in the uprising, witless kmicldeheads
who died with the same stoic indifference with, which they had
lived their lives. These events, much to the chagrin of the execu-
tioner, lacked the finesse that public affairs of this sort ought to
have had; for these should be performances with a long series of
ornate and pious accompaniments. Still it would be different with
those now being tried. . . .

The examinations had been going on for days. At first Bolivar
could not rest until he had a deposition from everyone who had
taken active part in the conspiracy. One by one, those implicated
were brought before him. Colonel Crofston dragged in the young
Frenchman Auguste Hormet. The would-be assassin shook off his
captor's arm, and spoke to Bolivar with cold insolence; whereupon
the legionnaire, angered at this hauteur, fell upon him and began
to choke him. But Bolivar sprang up, pulled them apart, and curtly
ordered Crofston to fall back*

**Aiid this is the man you, would Mil/* said Pepe Paris, alluding
to BoMvar who had Just saved him.

222 The Pour Seasons of Manuela

"Not the man," responded Hormet, "but the symbol of his
power/ 7

As the depositions were taken, first from one, then from the
other, Bolivar, who was familiar with the stratagems of plotters,
grew visibly shocked at the depth of the conspiracy. He had first
thought it involved only an isolated group of malcontents, used
by the Santanderistas to gain political control. But these were
young students, people of good family, university professors, and
even a member of his own general staff.

So then it was the people who misunderstood him, who did not
know or care about his personal sacrifices or his efforts to hold
Gran Colombia together. In short, as he now understood from this
precis of revolt, it was the people who had planned his death. Then
there was only one decision left him he would grant a general
amnesty and resign his offices.

General Urdaneta vehemently protested against such a pro-
cedure. They were dealing here with a conspiracy which, if
allowed to develop, would be the death of the Republic. Bolivar
by resigning would condone the revolt; he would repay the loyalty
of his officers and his soldiers by abandoning them; and he would
bring chaos down upon the land. At first even the other voices of
his Council, speaking in similar vein, failed to move Bolivar from
his firm resolve. Then it was Manuela. She had warned Bolivar
years ago about Santander even then she could see the patterns
of his perfidy but Bolivar would not listen. Everyone knew that
Santander's ambition had no scruples. Did Bolivar think that this
failure would not be followed by another attempt on his life? At
this moment, the Republic must hold mercy to be patricide. The
only way out was the anointed terror. And she repeated what she
had written to him earlier: "Better that ten should die, in order
that millions be saved/ 9

Bolivar yielded. He signed a decree appointing Rafael Urdaneta,
with four other officers and four judges, as a trial court. From its
judgments there would be no appeal save to himself, Simon
Bolivar. Then five days after the 25th of September Santander was

Danse Macabre

arrested, placed in close confinement, and held for trial After
that the dance of death.

By the morning of October 2 the hangman had worked out the
choreography. A bugler sounded the prelude at eleven o'clock, and
the bells of the cathedral answered in subdued antiphony. The
plaza slowly filled with people to witness the executions, for this
was a public spectacle. A fair had been installed around the edges
of the square, where hucksters in their best woolen ruanas sold
cakes and bread, and urged the bystanders to buy for their hats
the blue, gold, and red cockades of the Republic. Into the press
of people burst a file of soldiers, marching to drums and tam-
bourines. In their center, hands tied in front of him, was Colonel
Ramon Guerrera, in the uniform of a colonel of the Vargas Bat-
talion. He had been condemned to death. His eyes were cast
downward to a large crucifix held in his hands; he looked at no one
as he marched to death.

Not so Padilla. In full regalia of a general of the armies, bediz-
ened with medals, Padilla, bellicose to the end, walked with head
erect. He gave no ear to the exhortations of the priests beside him
and he looked across the vast crowd with an insolent stare of con-
tempt. Padilla was a huge man, curly-pated and dark-skinned,
standing head and shoulders above everyone, his fierce dignity
made somewhat grotesque by his squint eyes.

The death line halted in front of the improvised gallows, where
six wrist-thick ropes hung down, the nooses open and ready for
the dreadful business. General Urdaneta, in a gold-embroidered
red uniform, stood in front of the condemned men and read the
sentences of the court. Then, to the sound of muffled drums, the
soldiers began to strip rank and medals from the doomed men.
Colonel Guerrera submitted mildly to the last humiliations. But
Padilla*s black face was wreathed in fury, as he strained at his
bonds and shouted, "These medals were given to me not by
Bolivar, but by the Republic."

The voice became muted as the soldiers slipped the loose gray
cassock of the condemned over Ms head and shoved him to the

224 The Four Seasons of Manuela

gibbet stool. As the hangman adjusted the noose about his neck,
Padilla burst out again in final protest; in a voice like an avenging
angel he bellowed, "Long live the Republic! Long live liberty!"

At that moment the soldiers kicked the stools from under the
condemned men; their bodies dropped a few feet and were left
dangling in space. Colonel Guerrera did a brief entrechat for his
danse macabre, with proper respect for the amenities of
the moment died quickly. But not Padilla. His huge bull neck
took the shock of the plunge, and in his struggles he broke the
cords that bound his arms. Then he seized the noose and began
to wrestle with it* The hangman, who had never seen this done
before, stood wide-mouthed with astonishment; and through the
crowd ran a murmur of admiration. Urdaneta wanted no heroics.
He signaled the officer of the guard; a squad of soldiers rushed
forward, and at point-blank range fired into Padilla's writhing
body.

The gallows was kept busy for weeks. And, in addition to
executions, there were imprisonments and exiMngs. Personable
young Florentino Gonzalez escaped to the jungles and was con-
demned to death in absentia, Manuela's old enemy, Vicente
Azuero, was taken into custody, and even though he could not be
connected directly with the conspiracy he was thrown into prison.
But that "miserable Pedro Carujo/* that diminutive bundle of
terror, one of the leaders of the conspiracy and the assassin of
William Fergusson, escaped the fate of Padilla, He struck a
bargain with his captors. He would be sentenced to perpetual
exile; and in return for this clemency he would incriminate an-
other. He would turn state's evidence against General Santander.

The trial of Santander was elaborate and detailed, and its un-
raveling was followed with the greatest interest by the foreign
consuls, now much in evidence in Bogota. He was, after all, one
of the cofounders of the Republic. He had labored tirelessly to
give Bolivar the elements of his victories. His opposition to Bolivar
was as natural as it was understandable; he objected to the per-
sonalismo of the other's government, he wanted more liberty for

225

file individual than was envisioned by his rival Santander

wanted liberty, Bolivar wanted unity. Inevitably, one of them had

to lose.

Now, at this moment, the wounds were too fresh for the opera-
tion of pure reason. This much was certain about Santander's

guilt; he had known, despite his dignified asseveration of igno-
rance, of the conspiracy against Bolivar against the govern-
ment. He had condoned it, he had given the plotters advice, and
he was an officer in the army and a member of the government.
These facts were quite enough. It was ridiculous to speak of jus-
tice. The evidence against him was strained and in some cases im-
probable; but this was a matter of treason. The government's posi-
tion was too untenable to let it become involved in a protracted
trial; so Santander was condemned to death. The Council sug-
gested leniency; M anuela was vehemently against it. Padilla, one
of her three "PV* had died on the gallows; why not Santander,
the spiritual leader of the revolt? No argument could change her;
Santander should die. How the quondam Vice-President, resting
uneasily in his cell and wailing the outcome of his plea for clem-
ency, must have wished that he had not aroused the fury in that
woman! He knew now that she was no fool, she was a force; and
he regretted that, in his life of vertiginous intrigue, he had not
known it.

This time, however, Mamiela did not prevail. There had been
enough bloodletting for Simon Bolivar. He said, "I believe it was
our ruin not to have come to terms with Santander.** And he
changed the sentence to perpetual banishment from the realm.

All during these trials, Bolivar kept to his villa; he remained
in the privacy of Ms bedroom, tormented by fever and tortured
by doubts. Had his procedures been correct? Was he right in
abandoning peaceful political methods for the terror? The con-
stant questioning made inroads on his health, there was the
return of his cough, and he had now constantly to bury Ms face
in Ms handkercMef. His face had a lean, dry look; and his thin,

226 Tlie Four Seasons of Manuela

vivid lips were flecked ofttimes with blood-stained saliva; Ms dark
eyes, bright with fever, glittered like Jewels.

The illness was visibly consuming Bolivar, he was wasting away
with every day. Manuela brought in a doctor, who diagnosed a
return of the tuberculosis and prescribed rest and nourishment.
Bolivar was to avoid all excitement, and desist entirely from par-
ticipating in the affairs of the state. And if he did not? The question
was rhetorical; for if he did not, there was only one prognosis
that the Scot could give an early death. Dr. Richard Cheyne
called often at the Quinta and soon he supplanted the older Dr.
Moore. Cheyne was young, scarcely twenty-five; he had been
educated at the University of Edinburgh, and had come, one
knows not for what reason, to Bogota to set up practice. Bolivar
liked his modern medical ideas, for the big Scot was earnest with-
out the desiccating touch of the professional. He became very
much attached to Manuela too, and it was hinted, strongly hinted,
that there was more between them than a passing flirtation.

"I have only known Manuela," said Boussingault, "to have two
ostensible lovers in Bogota. One was Doctor Cheyne . , r

Whatever the relationship between them, Cheyne aided Ma-
nuela in every way possible to help the Liberator recover some-
thing of his health. Manuela was persuaded that if anything could
bring about his recovery, it would be her watchful and devoted
care.

No attempt now was made to maintain the fiction; Manuela
lived openly at the villa with Simon Bolivar. Since the night she
saved his life, a new dignity had come to her. Those who at first
were put off by her for the pattern of her strange behavior was
irritating to many now realized the depths of her loyalty to
Bolivar, and could understand something of his deep affection
for her. They could see that she had a fidelity which nothing
altered, and that she was ready to give her life for the ideal that
she professed. Those who had criticized her most were now most
noticeably drawn to her; they called her "The Liberatress.*" And
in this new role she spent all her time at the Quinta with Bolivar.

Danse Macabre 227

For weeks lie remained inconsolable, Ills letters were full of

despair. For lie could not escape the fact that the people, who
constituted his "glory/* had attempted his death, thereby

the ruin of the Republic which he had created.

"My heart is broken/" he cried, "and the prestige of my is

gone." Such was the state of Bolivar's mind when young August
Le Moyne, an agent of the French Government, called on him
in company with the French Consul;

We arrived at the Quinta and were received in the salon by a
lady named Manuela Saenz, the same lady who on the night of
the 25th of September exhibited so much valor in saving the life
of the Liberator; she told us he was not in good health, he having
taken a purgative just that morning and feeling unwell She asked
us the nature of our visit, and left to see if we could be received.
In a few minutes, there appeared a man with a large jaundiced
face, sickly in aspect, wrapped up in a dressing gown, with a
nightcap and slippers; Ms emaciated legs were stuck into ill-fit-
ting flannel pants; in a word it was the same costume as worn by
the miserable Argan as described by Moliere in Le Malade
Imaginaire. He looked more like a man going to the dressing room
than one about to receive visitors. This was Bolivar, the Colom-
bian hero. Once I was presented, he insisted that we sit down;
then he began to speak to us in French,

The first words we expressed were in respect to his health; he
responded; **Gh my," and he showed us his emaciated arms. "It is
not natural laws that have reduced me to the state which you now
see, but the bitterness which surrounds my heart. The people,
who were unable to Mil me with knives, have morally assassi-
nated me with their ingratitude and their calumnies; in other
times they praised me as if I were a god, now they wish to soil me
with their spittle; when I am not here to crush all those dema-
gogues, they tear each other apart as if they were wolves, and the
edifice that I have built with so much work, they destroy with the
fangs of revolution."

Everyone had hoped and believed that, with October's end
and the end of the bloodletting, the aura of dissolution and fear

that hung over Bogota would be lifted. The gibbet had done Its

and had been taken down. The residue of common soldiers,

228 The Four Seasons of Manuela

upon whom sentence had not been meted out there were a
hundred of them were granted a general amnesty and sent into
the provinces, away from the capital city. Only the principal
enemy ? Santander, remained; but soon he too was sent away from
Bogota. Manuela had a letter from a friend who escorted him to
the fortress of Cartagena, the first stage of his journey into exile:

MY DEAR LADY,

We arrived yesterday at Guaduas the only novelty was that
"the Man" Santander became a little ill, I can assure you he is
very humble; he does not wish to see anyone and said that he
never wants to return to Colombia.

Manuela would have Hked to see him exiled to heE; still it was
good that he was gone. The feeling that they had broken the ring
of conspiracy gave Bolivar a certain sense of ease.

Moreover, he was able to rely on Urdaneta, the only real vic-
tor of the conspiracy of the 25th of September. Bolivar gave over
to him the administration of the government, and he emerged as
the power behind the throne. He was a complete gentleman, who
maintained a calm indifference in face of crises, and always pre-
served Ms serenity in emergencies. He never lost anything, forgot
anything. He refused to fill his life, as did others, with exclama-
tions of mea culpa, or of melancholy. His every act was done with
firmness and frankness. There was no problem with Urdaneta.
Bolivar's loyalties were his loyalties; besides, between him and
Manuela there was complete understanding.

In those days the Republic seemed to be making rapid economic
recovery and some European capital was coming into the country.
A Heir Elbers of Hamburg received a franchise to operate steam
side-wheelers on the Magdalena River and this gave great impetus
to the moving of freight. An Englishman arrived to put up a small
mill. Gran Colombia's exports had risen, and, with the fear of
chaos abated, businessmen were releasing more and yet more of
their hoarded silver pesos. The United States was sending a min-
ister, the renowned General William Henry Harrison, Yet under

Danse Macabre 229

the thin earthcnist Gran Colombia writhed turned from

the inner pressure of events. Once more It burst its and

sent forth new lows of blood-red revolt.

Again it was the caudillos, the leaders of isolated regions, who
wished to rule, not to be ruled. On the distant llanos of Venezuela
it was General Paez; in Ecuador It was General Flores; in southern
Colombia there was a whole list of dissidents. In Peru it was some-
thing else for Bolivar had never been reconciled to the rebellion
of his troops in Lima, or the insult that had been offered to him
and Gran Colombia and there was talk of war.

But on Simon Bolivar's saint's day, the 28th of October, the
General gave a grand ball at the Palace of San Carlos.

For Bogota, which had not the traditional opulence of Lima,
it was a very brilliant affair, principally because the capital was
now filled with the representatives of foreign governments. It had
all the glamour of an international event. England was repre-
sented by Mr. Henderson, whose daughter, the apple-cheeked
Fanny, was engaged to youthful General Cordoba. The French
had sent their Baron Gros, a strange character, a master of in-
trigue, who was in Bogota to lay the groundwork for a monarchy
under the protection of France. He was being watched very as-
siduously by Colonel Johnson, the military attache from Washing-
ton, who had come there in anticipation of the arrival of the first
American minister. Yet the gaiety of the party seemed forced,
though the little orchestra in the green uniform of the Granaderos
played some popular boleros.

Simon Bolivar attended, entering with Manuela on his arm. He
came en frac, in white woolen smallclothes, silk stockings, buckled
shoes, and a long black tail coat. He wore only a single decoration,
the medallion of George Washington, which hung about his
emaciated neck on a blue moire silk ribbon, Manuela, too, was
strangely subdued. Since that September night her one care, her
one thought was Bolivar, and she entered the room on his arm
with a dignity that gave, it seemed, a greater sensuality to her lithe
body. Her decattetage was emphasized by a diamond and emerald

230 The Four Seasons of Manuela

necklace. Bolivar now tired very easily and they stayed only long
enough to satisfy protocol.

And it was well, perhaps, that they did leave, for they too might
have fallen victims to the contagion so general in Bogota. Tempers
were short. Some nameless, some unidentifiable rancor still gripped
the capital, even though the terror had gone with the last execu-
tions. But violence remained in the very air, and it now reached
the high levels of diplomacy*

The Consul of the Low Countries, Stewart by name, had just
arrived in Bogota. He was a gay companion, but as proud and
sensitive as a Spanish grandee. And he loved to gamble. "There
was a game one night," remembered Boussingault "The table was
covered with the stakes. At eleven o'clock there was an earth-
quake. Everyone ran out into the street the Consul from Holland
fled with the others but he was the only one who picked up his
gold before dashing out of the gaming room." A deliberate sort
of man.

No one remembered how it started. The diplomats were drink-
ing brandy; they were joined by Colonel Miranda, the son of the
famous General Miranda. The conversation turned on politics,
the recent uprising was discussed; then the Consul of Holland
made an unfortunate remark of which Manuela was the target.
Miranda lushed angry at the inference; there was a venomous
exchange of words, and the officer, expressing the general mood
and completely forgetting himself, slapped the diplomat. A duel
was the only solution. Colonel Johnson, acting as Miranda's
second, suggested sabers for he was a good swordsman. But
Monsieur Stewart, the offended party, demanded pistols.

A cloud of gloom seemed to drop on the grand ball that had
been designed as a love feast. The news traveled quickly. Manuela,
feeling herself involved, tried to get in touch with Consul Stewart,
but was rebuffed. All through the night she could hear Miranda,
who lived close by, practicing with his pistols.

They met the next morning, on the hills above the Fucha River,
overlooking Bogota. It was cold. A light rain feE like a Scotch

Danse 231

mist, giving the look of cat's fur to the heavy cloaks of the
party. Richard Cheyne was present as doctor, and stood with his
black case under Ms arm, wondering to which of the two he
would be required to give medical aid.

Stewart arrived in semimilitary dress; on his head, completely
unsuitable to the event, he wore a wide-brimmed Panama. Colonel
Miranda came in full uniform., wearing a hussar's bearskin shako
at a jaunty angle. They took their positions. After the usual at-
tempt at reconciliation had been put forward and refused by
both parties, Stewart raised his pistol, took deliberate aim, and
fired. The bullet came so close to Miranda's head that it tore a strip
from his furred busby. Miranda then put his pistol under his arm
and, with a humanity all out of step with the times, saluted his
adversary and gave him the opportunity to apologize. The Consul
was livid.

**Shoot, for if you do not, I will kill you as I would a dog."

Miranda slowly brought down his pistol, aimed at the black
ribbon about the crown of Ms adversary's hat, and pulled the
trigger.

There was no need for the presence of Dr. Cheyne, Stewart had
been shot right through the head.

The military police were on Miranda's trail at once. With the
help of his brother officers, he contrived to escape the city and
join his corps of lancers. It did him no good, however. A few weeks
later his soldiers revolted and hacked him to pieces with their
sabers.

Such happenings were symptomatic of the times, and they
affected Bolivar as if he himself had experienced every death. He
was supposed to rest, but could not. Things were going badly all
over the country, and the relations between Peru and Gran
Colombia had deteriorated so much in the last weeks that people
talked openly o hostile actions. A Peruvian leet had sailed to
blockade the coast, and intelligence reports slowly drifted up to
tel of Peruvian troops marching into Ecuador. There was only

232 The Four Seasons of Manuela

one possible course now. Bolivar must ride southward to defend
the bastions of Gran Colombia. But how could he, in his state of
health, ride a thousand miles to do battle he who could hardly
stay in the saddle more than two hours at a time? Certainly it was
no love of power that sent this tragic half -man, the creator of the
Republic, again into battle.

On January 1, 1829, the heart of the Andes trembled. Peru had
invaded Ecuador. Bolivar hurriedly called General Sucre out of
retirement in Quito, assembled his armies, placed Manuela under
the protection of a triad of his trusted advisers. Then, in obvious
pain, he mounted his horse and set forth into the chaos ... a
modern Don Quixote riding off to tilt with the windmills of perfidy.

15
AND SO-MANUELA

MANUELA Is always visible."

And it was now impossible to conceive Bogota without her. In
the morning she was on her balcony overlooking the narrow street,
eying the well-dressed people entering San Ignacio for early
mass. Later, dressed in her hussar's garb, she rode abroad, with
the usual whispered comments floating behind her. And in the
evenings, her tertulias.

She did not involve herself directly in politics Bolivar insisted
at least on that. The loom of Bogota's political life was in the
capable hands of General Urdaneta, and she allowed him the
weaving. Her mission now, as she saw it, beyond the routine
gathering of the Liberator's personal correspondence, was that of
political catalyst She would further bind Bolivar's personal and
political friends to him by constant reminders of him, even though
at the moment he was on his way to Ecuador to repel the invasion
from Peru. Letters from him, dispatches from his aides, rumors,
scandal, dire warnings, were given out at the tertulios. Usually
they were folowed by drinking, sometimes a dance, and often a
performance by Jonotas, whose mimicking black face was the joy
and horror of all Bogota.

Bolivars concern over Manuela, even though he was miles from
the font and source of Ms passion, was very touching. He had put
her well-being in the hands of three of Ms most trusted friends:
the self-effacing Pepe Paris, who was devoted to albeit bewildered
by Manuela; John Ilingsworth whom everyone called

234 The Four Seasons of Manuela

Ingsrof* the English sea captain, an old friend of hers and a
passionate partisan of his; and General Urdaneta, who had in
recent months become virtually the Liberator's alter ego.

This last of the triad controlled the purse strings. "I gave five
hundred pesos to Manuela/* he said, writing to Bolivar; and later,
*1 delivered another five hundred pesos to M. keeping in my
possession the other thousand." She seemed to consume more
money than the mint possessed, for again and again Urdaneta was
writing about it: "Manuela received the five hundred pesos you
left for her after you departed the first of January, she asked me
for another four hundred and yesterday another four hundred,
which she said she needed urgently ... so I sent it over."

To which solicitude Bolivar answered, "Thank you for inform-
ing me about the four hundred pesos you gave Manuelita . . ."
And again, when neaiing the Ecuadorian frontier, "I was very ill,
but now I have improved; please tell this to Manuelita/*

John Illingsworth was detailed to give her sober English counsel,
but he might as well have given advice to a volcano. Manuela
was guided mostly by Manuela. The good-looking young medico,
Dr. Cheyne, called often at her house too often, thought John
Illingsworth. And another young man, William Wills, who loved
to play the violin for her, was at the apartment so constantly that
someone said he might as well occupy one of the guest rooms*
"And to think/* wrote a Frenchman, "that the dear Liberator
wrote his friend Illingsworth to watch over her well and give her
advice.**

Pepe Paris looked in on her whenever he was in the vicinity.
Tall, graced with good manners, an engagingly easy person to
know, Don Pep6 was the most constant of her friends. His
normality was refreshing in contrast to the equatorially lush at-
titudes of the others that surrounded her. One could always rely
on Pepe. He never contended that he knew Manuela some of
the things that she did he could never understand but he
realized that people often hide their true natures under an elabo-
rate facade of unrelated behavior. He knew that under the baroque

And So Manuela 235

aspects of Manuela lay a true and loyal person; and he hen

He often brought his wife Juana Maria on his visits to Manuela,

so that a show of propriety would be preserved and the gossips
would not link his name in intimacy with hers. At the moment
Paris was engaged, in the black hole of the jungle, in operating
the famous emerald mine at Muzo, a mine which yielded the finest
stones in the world. For this reason he was often absent from the
capital, and writing to Bolivar he had to say, **I have not seen
Manuelita for some days/*

And later, when he had presented her with some emeralds to
which she seemed for some unfathomable reason indifferent., a l
have not seen Manuela for I feel put out that she did not like the
emeralds. But today I shal see her.**

And on that day he brought his own Manuelita, his charming
diminutive daughter, to meet the other Manuelita. At this tertulia,
the unpredictable Saenz ^arranged 57 a marriage between Sefiorita
Paris and the personable Lolo Boussingault. The young French
scientist had been attracted to her everyone knew that but
still, marriage ... It was days later that he could write home
about it:

Now this Manuela Sienz abhors marriage. Yet despite this she
is always taken with the notion of arranging marriages between
other people, seeming to tell them: "Marriage pledges one to
nothing, it is a passion of pleasure."

Well, it was me, that night, that she designated as her victim.
It must be known that here in South America marriage is purely
a religious act never civil. It suffices only that in the presence
of a priest you declare that you desire to be united. You receive
the benediction and that is all. People are married everywhere.
In the street, at a ball; several of my comrades have been mar-
ried in the interval between two glasses of punch among others
Colonel Demarquet (who is married to one of Manuela's family).
He regretted it, even though Ms wife is beautiful, charming, and
from a very honorable family.

Wei, that night at a tertulm, Pep Paris (the one who has be-
come so rich exploiting the emerald mines) was there with Ms
daughter a delightful person; very small, only four feet eight

236 The Four Seasons of Manuela

inches tall. That there Is a certain feeling between us is true.
Manuela Saenz knew of this; at about the time midnight was to
strike, there seemed to go through the company a feeling of ex-
citement. A friend, an Englishman, came and whispered to me,
"Jean, look out, a priest is about to appear/*

Manuela Saenz had brought him there without my knowing it
and would have seen us married; but then, being warned and
without anyone noticing it, I made a prudent retreat.

Several days after this, I found myself with my "fiancee/* I put
to her this time the question of marriage, on condition that she
decide to live in Europe. She consented- to make a trip to France,
but she declared to me frankly that she did not want to stay there.

So I left. I kissed her miniature hand, jumped on my horse, and
rode away. I never saw the small and graceful Senorita Paris
again,

<c But let me tell you about Manuela Saenz/*

And thus many people in Paris began to learn about this
extraordinary woman, from the pen of Jean-Baptiste Boussingault.
He was a handsome young man. Thirty-three years old ( a year
older than Manuela), he was born in Paris of a German-speaking
Alsatian mother (who called him Lolo) and a French father, a
minor official in the city government. He was studying chemistry
at the Sorborme when a letter arrived from Simon Bolivar, ad-
dressed to the savants of France. Gran Colombia had been ruined
by the revolution, her intellectuals had been deported or shot;
her educational institutions, particularly the technical ones, were
now non-existent. The Liberator-President asked the French
savants to choose five young scientists and send them to Gran
Colombia to survey the material wealth of the state and to re-
establish its cultural life. The chosen ones were Desire Roulin,
physician and artist; Jacques Bourdon, topographer; Goudot;
Ribera; and Botissingault. When Jean-Baptiste arrived in America
he carried a letter of introduction from the great Alexander von
Hranboldt to Bolivar. The Liberator instantly liked this young
man of the generous nose, the wide, expressive brown eyes, the
high forehead dominated by an ample mop of rumpled hair.

And So - Manueh 237

Bolivar made him a colonel, attached him to his staff, and placed
him in charge of assessing the natural resources of Gran Colombia.
No one believed, at that time, that this young and personable
Lolo Boussingault would some day become a famed scientist; or
that he kept a journal of events and people, and constantly wrote
home he was in fact a weekly courier of the news from the New
World:

But, dear Mama, let me tell you about Manuela Saenz
Although Manuelita does not admit her age, she seems to be
about twenty-nine or thirty years of age; she is, in all the burst of
her irregular beauty, a handsome woman, light figure, brown eyes,
an indecisive look, pink complexion on a white background; she
has black hair . . .

And so he ran on, telling his "dear Mama" of Manuela's man-
ners and caprices, of her household and history, of her affairs with
Bolivar, with James Thome, with Fausto d'Elhuyar in Quito long
ago. . . . But some of the details were not fit for the eyes of his
proper Hausfrau mother; and these he narrated instead to his
brother:

And then there is Jonotas, the mulatress-slave of Manuela from
whom she is never separated; she is a young slave Negress with
woolly hair, a striking woman, always dressed as a soldier except
in the circumstances of which I will tell you. She is really the
shadow of her mistress but this is just gossip here also sup-
posed to be her mistress's lover, conforming to a vice common in
Peru. I have been witness with my own eyes to this vice, with a
few of my comrades. We formed a group to attend this impure
but very diverting ceremony at a tertulia , . .

But of this Jonotas she is a singular being, a comedian, a
mime, with an amazing gift for imitation. Her face is impassive
and she discusses the funniest things with an outward seriousness.
Now one night . . .

The mulatress changed into the clothes of her sex, the costume
for dancing the napangas of Quito. She performed, to our great
satisfaction, the most lascivious dance. She pivoted first with great
rapidity, then, stopping and lowering herself, her petticoat inflated
with air, did what the children at home call a fromage; then

238 The POUT Seasons of Manuela

with, great writhing and lascivious movements she lowered herself
to the floor for a moment, then getting up, she went off, pirouet-
ting out of sight. But where she had squatted, one could see where
her naked cleft had contact with the floor. Loud applause; but it
was a revolting obscenity. Soon Jonotas returned, dressed once
again in military attire, as serious as if she had not just given this
scandalous exhibition.

He added a little, too, about Ms own encounters with the
amazing La Saenz:

One night I went to her apartment to get a letter of recommen-
dation, which had been promised me. The letter was addressed to
her brother, General Jose Maria Saenz, living in Quito, where I
was going, as you know. She had just left the dinner table and
received me in a small drawing room. During our conversation,
she praised the skill of her countrywomen at embroidery, and as
proof she wanted to show me an artistically worked petticoat.
Then without embarrassment and in the most natural way in
the world she took the bottom of her petticoat and lifted it in
such a way that I could see the really remarkable work of the
women of Quito.

But I was constrained to see something else other than the
embroidered petticoat.

"Look now, mon cher Jean., how this is done. 55

"But done to a turn, madame," said I, making an allusion to her
legs.

The situation was becoming really embarrassing to my modesty,
when I was removed from this position by the entrance of the
Englishman, William Wills, who came in unannounced. Without
being the least disconcerted, Manuela said, "I was just showing
Don Juan the embroideries of Quito/*

Then from the south came news more disturbing than the lace
on Manuela's petticoat. The Peruvian army had penetrated into
the Ecuadorian highlands and was pushing on to Quito. Of more
immediate danger some of the officers in Bolivar's southern
Colombian armies were said to be in contact with the Peruvians,
and hoping to join forces with them over the prostrate body of
Ecuador. The dashing General Cordoba was called away from the
arms of his Fanny, and in his fashion he quickly subdued the

And So Manuela 239

would-be rebels. Then, to secure the dissidents to the army for
the impending war with Peru, Bolivar granted a general amnesty.
Cordoba ranted and fumed at these palliative measures., but
Bolivar remained adamant. Then he sent orders to General Sucre
to take to the field and defeat the enemy. At first Sucre refused.
He was living in despair. In Bolivia he had put down a revolt,
and had been wounded in the head and arm; political events since
then had killed the last of his enthusiasm.

Sucre was without ambitions or passions, except that for his
girl wife. He had been married to his Mariana, heiress to the title
and property of the Marquis de Solanda, and during the intervals
following his return his dainty Marquesa had given him a daugh-
ter, Teresa. He soon saw that his marriage was a mistake. He trans-
formed his passion for his wife into a fervent love for his child.

But even though his right arm was paralyzed from a bullet
wound, and his heart saddened by his failure in love, Sucre could
not forget his old companion-in-arms. He knew that Bolivar was
too ill to lead troops into battle. He therefore massed his forces,
and in the last weeks of February, 1829, moved down to meet the
Peruvians. Here was the tragedy of disunity; the opposing gen-
erals, Sucre and La Mar, had fought together on the plains of
Ayacucho as blood brothers, but now they were enemies. Sucre,
although outnumbered, knew the land; besides, the new sighting
devices on his rifles played havoc in the Peruvian ranks. Before
that time, bullets went where the devil sent them but now:

Today it is a joy; the coward and the brave man are felled on
the battlefield with the simplicity of solving the equation in the
third degree. One dies mathematically, by the rule, without mis-
takes in addition or a slip of the pen, and in the end this must be
a consolation to the one who is shuffling off this mortal coil. No
question about it, today a cannon ball is something almost scien-
tific, born with an education and knowing exactly where it is
going. This is progress, and all the rest is folderoL

Thanks to fids device the Battle of Tarqui, fought on February
27, 1829, was an overwhelming victory for Sucre and Gran Co-

240 The Four Seasons of Manuela

lombia. It took a month for tie news of the fight to reach Bogota;
and by that time a new character had joined the dramatis personae

on the confused political stage of the Republic. Already he had
a speaking part of importance:

To MAHUN VAN BDHEN March 28, 1829

SECBETABY OF STATE

SIB:

I have the honor to inform you that an officer from the head-
quarters of General Bolivar has just arrived bringing information
of the complete defeat of the Peruvian army and the conclusion
of peace. . . . Nothing can exceed the joy with which this news
has been, received here.

WILLIAM H. HARBISON

The hero of Tippecanoe, General William Henry Harrison, ar-
rived in Bogota under trying conditions. The long horseback jour-
ney from the Magdalena River had irritated his old battle wounds,
the dampness of Bogota inflamed his gout, and the country to
which the pathos of distance had once lent enchantment upset
him at every turn. A veteran of wars against Indian and Briton,
well-meaning albeit bungling (and just twelve years away from
the presidency of his country), he was an opinionated old soldier,
out of step the moment he arrived.

"An old servant of the United States," Boussingault described
him in these days, "angular movements, education not very high,
affecting extreme demagogic opinions. Because of what he con-
sidered to be the requirements of his official position, he in-
vited to his evening gatherings Americans of the working class,
honest fellows, as a matter of fact with much better public man-
ners than their Ambassador.**

When, for example, at a large banquet in Bogota given on the
anniversary of the Battle of Boyacd, the Yorktown of Colombia, a
gentleman proposed a toast to the two illustrious liberators of
America, Bolivar and Washington it was the thing to associate
these two names even though there was very little resemblance

And So Manuela 241

between their characters old General Harrison got angry, and
waving Ms glass with undiplomatic insistence declared, "Wash-
ington dead is worth more than Bolivar alive."

Now anyone, most of all an ambassador, should have known
that this was not the thing to say while the memory of the attempt
on Bolivar's life was still fresh; and especially not when one of the
dinner guests was Manuela Saenz, who had saved him. From that
day forward, Harrison was marked by Manuela as an enemy.

And there were other enemies too. "The English-American
colony,'' observed Boussingault, "was very hostile to the Libera-
tor." And there were suggestions of another conspiracy forming
against Bolivar. This time it seemed to emanate from sources
around General Cordoba. He was close to the British, and his love
for Fanny Henderson brought him to the homes of many who were
openly opposed to Simon Bolivar; what he already did bordered
on sedition. Cordoba was a romantic, passionate, restless, and con-
fused. When Manuela heard of his cabal she shifted her rumor-
gathering in that direction.

Still, when the news of the victory of Tarqui came to Bogota,
Manuela could no longer restrain herself; the weeks of anxiety,
the waiting, the wondering came to an end with the news of the
complete victory of General Sucre. She organized a picnic in honor
of the event. Boussingault, like others of Manuela's intimate circle,
was a guest:

We were in the midst of the dry season. Our rendezvous was
at eight o'clock in the morning on Carrera Street, in front of the
house of John Illingsworth.

Well, at that hour, when we started, much to my surprise I
noted, far off in front, a corps of cavalrymen who had preceded
me, and amazingly enough among them there was a superior
officer. Strange, too, for we were all supposed to go on the picnic
in civilian clothes. The presence of an officer surprised ine.

When I approached to salute the colonel, he maneuvered in
such a fashion as to hide his face. The result was, for the moment,
a rather bizarre episode of horsemanship. Then suddenly Tie"
looked at me and burst out in a roar of feminine laughter. I saw

242 Tlie Four Seasons of Manuela

that the "office/ 7 was a woman, very pretty, and in spite o the
enormous mustache she had put on her lip, I recognized her as
Manuelita.

We now directed ourselves toward the plains of Soacha, accom-
panied by a mule packed with food and wines. The weather was
splendid, one of those stirring mornings one sees only on the
temperate plateaus of the Cordilleras. The horses pawed the
ground, champed at the bit, until they were allowed to gallop.
Then there was a satanical race and we were approaching the hill
of Canoas, when suddenly "Colonel" Manuela tumbled off her
horse, and in such a manner as to frighten us out of our wits. She
was thrown out of the saddle, falling six feet from horse to
ground. Stunned by the blow, she lay there unmoving.

Fortunately, Dr. Richard Ninian Cheyne, a handsome Scots-
man, was with us. He unbuttoned the "Colonel's" uniform and I
said to him, "Make an examination of her, Doctor, you are fa-
miliar with the human body." As a matter of fact he had before;
he said "She's a woman of singular conformation." I never could
make him explain how she was conformed. All I know is that he
said she possessed a secret charm to make herself adored.

Manuela gained consciousness, heard my remarks about exam-
ining her; she fixed me with one eye and said lightly, "Don Juan,
you have a filthy mind."

The injuries proving to be slight, the examination was termi-
nated quickly and there was nothing serious, a very light sprain of
the left shoulder. The "Colonel's" mustaches (which, had been cut
from fallen Spanish officers at Ayacucho, and made into a simu-
lated mustache and presented to Manuela by the victors of the
battle) I had removed, then we got back into the saddle without
difficulty and, keeping our horses to a canter, we arrived at
Canoas. Here we left our torses to take the narrow path which
ended at the place where one could see the cascade.

The Falls of Tequendama drain the savannahs of Bogota and
tumble in a violent roar of water to rocks three hundred fifty feet
below. The beautiful painting that I have seen, owned by Baron
Gros, the French Consul, while excellent, does not give the whole
idea of the mass of water; the painting lacks emotion, vitality,
movement, tihie water there is motionless and silent; in nature the
Falls go over in a yellow watery mass of vapor and sound.

I proposed that we admire the Falls of Tequendama first, then
have lunch. Illingsworth seconded this thought, but Colonel

And So Manuela 243

Manuelita announced that we should have lunch immediately and
threw a tablecloth on the ground. At once the spread was cov-
ered with the most delicious of edibles and the most delectable
of wines; champagne dominated the spirits. The ride had stimu-
lated our appetites. We devoured the food, we drank too much,
and Manuelita was of a wild and contagious gaiety. As we were
eight, an unlucky number, I said it was to be feared that there
would be at least one of us who would be precipitated into that
whirlpool of the tumbling cascade.

An English missionary who was there began to improvise some
mad verses on hell and heaven, and the end of the world; two
Irishmen, stuffed and overstuffed, went to sleep and started to
snore ? as if in insult to beautiful nature. As I contemplated them,
I suddenly was drawn to Manuelita., standing on the edge of a
rock overhanging the falls, making wild gestures. The din of the
roaring Tequendama kept us from hearing what she was shout-
ing. I immediately leaped toward her and, grabbing her by the
collar, sought to pull her back to safety. Impossible; and the strug-
gle on the edge of the abyss was becoming steadily dangerous,
I was sliding into the slippery rock-cavity, and so I increased
my hold on her thighs. Dr. Cheyne, now seeing the danger in
which this madly gay and tipsy maenad placed us, ran up, at-
tached himself to a stout tree; then he grabbed with his left hand
the long and magnificent tresses of this imprudent Manuela just
at the moment when she seemed decided to jump into space.

Thus we spent, Cheyne and I, a terrible quarter of an hour,
until our calls brought others and Manuelita was put into a place
of safety.

Once we were safe, we decided to return to Bogota; the two
Irishmen were still snoring; I poured some water on their backs,
and they woke up spluttering, thinking themselves under the
water-cascade. Before leaving we threw the empty bottles into
the maelstrom; one of them stuck there and eventually, covered
with moss, fell the entire drop of the falls without breaking. Thus
the legend of the bottle of the Commander Don Juan was born.

We trotted back to Bogota, calmly although very tired; at sun-
down we entered the city. At night, we were united again in
Manuelita's salon; she looked fresh as morning, with natural flow-
ers woven into her black hair. She was charming, nice to every-
one, speaking of the waterfall with high enthusiasm:

"We will return there,** site was saying, ** and soon/*

244 The Four Seasons of Manuela

What an amazing person Mamielita is! Such weaknesses, such
light-heartedness, such courage, such devotion. . . .

General Harrison to himself: "April, 1829, The personal envoys
of Charles X of France were received with marked distinc-
tion. . . .*

The French delegation was a large entourage, and its members
had been chosen for their titles or for the prestige of their names
the Due de Montebello, the son of the great soldier Marshal
Lannes; Charles de Bresson, the confidential agent of the King of
France. They were received with a deference that made plain old
General Harrison writhe with anger, a sentiment which was
echoed by the British Consul. The memory of France and her
aggressions was still fresh in English minds, and his government
was uneasy about Gallic intervention in the political arena of
South America, a region which, since the defeat of Spain, had been
Great Britain's exclusive hunting ground.

As if natural, the agents of the King of France called upon
Manuela. Lolo Boussingault was there at the reception:

I met at the Due de Montebello's one of my old schoolmates of
the Imperial Academy; we were in the sixth grade then, in the
class of Professor Couanne, an old dragoon of Napoleon, who
had had part of his right buttock shot off by a shell, and so he
wore a satin pad to fill up the cavity, a sort of pincushion. Remem-
berand wasn't it humiliating the way we had to kneel at
the master's chair for the slightest blunder? Well, while the pro-
fessor held forth, we used to amuse ourselves, sitting at his feet,
by sticking pins in that part of his pincushion buttock. It hap-
pened one day that my friend, whom I met at Manuela's, was put
on the other side of him and mistaking the side, stuck his long
pin in the wrong buttock.

The French had come to Bogotd for serious purposes. In the
Liberator's absence in the south, discontent had again seized the
country, and this time from a new direction. The party of Santan-
der, to be sure, was scattered and ineffective; but now there was
dissension in Bolivar's own group of supporters. Some of them

And So Manuela 245

wanted a return of monarchy to give continuity to Gran Colombia;
genera! elections, in their minds, would only open again the
wounds of anarchy. Who would succeed Bolivar? No one else had
the talisman of his glory, no one else in the public eye could bind
together all the dissentient people, conquer distance and geogra-
phy. Who else then but a king, some prince who would assume
power under a constitutional monarchy?

What did Bolivar himself think of the plan? His sister Maria
Antonia could have answered for him, just as she did when the
crown was offered to him in Lima in 1826: "The title of Liberator
is your real one; it has extolled your name among the great of the
earth. You should repudiate anyone who offers you a crown."

Bolivar was aware of the negotiations, but he did nothing to
encourage or discourage them. Yet it was General Rafael Urdaneta
the chief of government during Bolivar's absence who ad-
vanced the plan. If Gran Colombia could not survive under the
present republican form, then it should have its permanence under
the aegis of monarchy. Colombia had seemingly gone the full
circle. The new dissidents, in view of their professed love of Boli-
var, were terribly cold-blooded. They knew that the Liberator was
an ill man. Not a moribundus perhaps; but the doctor had said that
tuberculosis was upon him, and that it would consume him if he
did not soon rest from his labors. They also knew that Bolivar,
despite his asseverations to the contrary, was sterile.

No, at the rate he was consuming himself, Bolivar could not be
expected to live long. Therefore, he would be offered the crown
of Gran Colombia under the protection of the King of France;
and on his demise, the throne would pass to Louis Philippe, Due
d'Orleans.

The return to the monarchical idea had, no doubt, much support
among the upper classes and the higher clergy. The glamour that
these French envoys brought in their train the ktest styles, the
most fashionable scents of Paris, the prestige of their titles, the
feeling of protection that came with being under the aegis of the
King of France struck those living in the austere simplicity of

246 The Four Seasons of Manuela

Bogota as a beautiful chimera, a fascinating escape from republi-
can chaos.

The one disturbing element in the plan was Manuela. She could
not now be separated from Bolivar, especially after the night when
she saved his life. They belonged to one another. So if Simon Boli-
var became King of Gran Colombia then what of Manuela?
Would she become Queen? Over this, the council for the establish-
ment of a constitutional monarchy spent more argument than over
all the other technicalities; they gave to it fuller attention than the
other problems that these decisions would awake. Let her be then
a mistress-consort, a sort of Colombian Madame du Barry. . . .

General Harrison again to himself: "July 23, 1829. Affairs of the
country fast reaching a crisis."

And they were. Moreover, Harrison had knowledge of them, for
he had in some sense given implied support to a movement against
Bolivar; he was privy to the uprising planned by General Cordoba.

The Council was still divided on the question of Manuela; but
the Secretary of State was not divided in his opinion about the
whole speculation. Jose Manuel Restrepo, proud and honorable,
shook with wrath at such political metaphysics. His handsome
head with its generous nose took on more dignity than those about
him had ever seen. He brought against these plans thundering
arguments and venerable aphorisms, and when he saw that he
would be outvoted, after ten years' service in his present office,
he resigned.

Further, the French delegation was not in good humor now.
They had been in the country for months and had not yet seen
Bolivar. It was as Boussingault said:

They arrived when Bolivar was in the south, in Quito I believe.
M. de Bresson wrote him asking his permission to go there and
present his letters to him. There was no answer. . . . One could
easily see that he did not care to receive the visit of the French
delegation. The diplomats were piqued at the lack of enthusiasm
shown by the Liberator in his relationship with them; they could

And So Manuela 247

not understand it The Ministers had received them with the
greatest deference, and the Chief of State seemed hardly inter-
ested in receiving them.

I got the key to the enigma from Pepe Paris (who never hav-
ing accepted any official position was his intimate friend, the con-
fidant of Bolivar). He told him how difficult it would be for him
to receive, in his sad and shabby quarters, the French envoys,
one of whom was the son of Marshal Lannes, of the great empire.
When he looked about him, he saw the lack of resources, even
poverty; his palace was a hovel, his soldiers in rags. His vanity
suffered from it Looked at from a distance, he appeared sur-
rounded by an aura of glory, which gradually vanished as one
approached his person. He knew it, that is why he eluded the
French delegates. As much as he depended on contact with the
diplomatic world, he preferred, whenever possible, to remain
invisible. . . .

The government of the Bourbons have constantly showed them-
selves hostile to the insurrection of the Spanish colonies; however,
when the Republic was recognized by the United States, Eng-
land and Holland, France determined to send its royal commis-
sion to Colombia. But they never obtained their audience with
the Liberator. ... It was, as one can see, a question of pride.

It was a question of pride too with Cordoba. No place Bad been
found for him in the Interim administration, and for years he had
been drifting away from the Liberato/s government; he was a
man of war. And Bolivar knew the fundamental weaknesses of Ms
character:

General Cordoba has rare military valor "but also a hard and
unbending character, a ridiculous arrogance and an excessive
vanity, which are only virtues for the battlefield; beyond that
they are dangerous.

What was the drift of Cordoba's ideas? Manuela had tried to
determine it for some time, but her tatred for Mm colored much
that she could discover. There was certainly some connection be-
tween the talk of revolt and C6rdoba > s connection with the think-
ing in the English-American colony. Manuela knew, everyone
knew, that die English disliked the monarchical plan as given out
by Bolivar's inner councils; and Cordoba was decidedly influenced

248 The Four Seasons of Manuela

by the British Consul. After all, he was engaged to the Consul's
daughter; and it could be that, while ostensibly visiting her, he
was actually holding treasonable discussions with her father.

Cordoba was a popular hero. Next to Simon Bolivar himself, no
other person in all of Gran Colombia inspired so much public
enthusiasm. A boy soldier at fourteen, he had fought through all
of the battles of the revolution. It was his charge that won the
battle for Quito. It was his valor in face of the enemy at the final
engagement in Peru which was the turning point of that battle of
decision. He was a handsome warrior, with a fine-looking head,
sloe eyes, and a military bearing. At first, the people rallied to him
in the Cauca Valley, where he was exceedingly popular. He had
delegates sworn personally to him rather than to the government;
and the battalions he commanded under the colors of Gran Colom-
bia took their oath to move with him against the troops of Simon
Bolivar. All this soon became known, but in writing of the matter
to Bolivar, General Urdaneta suggested compromise: "I will try
to draw him into the Cabinet."

But Cordoba could not be so easily appeased. His revolt was
spreading all down the valley. Thus far he had taken no military
steps, yet the disaffection was growing. It was as dangerous to
Cordoba as it was to Bolivar for the young firebrand operated
under a fatal delusion. He mistook popular acclaim for popular
will. Furthermore, the defects of his personality began to show
themselves. First he was enthusiastic, then he drifted into a defeat-
ist melancholia. He was flattered by the attentions of General
Harrison, who breathed, fire every time the word "monarchy" was
mentioned, and he naturally assumed that when he wed the
daughter of the British Consul, he was making a military alliance
with Great Britain. Cordoba knew little about the cerebral
processes.

Manuela was dining on the night of September 8th with Urda-
neta when a courier, wet with mud and rain, came in to report that
General Cordoba had started his revolt. He had seized the bar-

And So Manuela 249

racks at Medellin, and a large body of troops was rallying to his
standard. It seemed that the disaffection was greater than they
had suspected. Unless the government moved quickly, the revolt
would gain headway. Things had happened just as Manuela told
Bolivar they would. She had suspected Cordoba for years. Besides
he had incurred her implacable hatred, her fixed unalterable re-
sentment. Yet Urdaneta thought lightly of the revolt; "I think I
can handle the Cordoba affair quietly."

Still he sent for his best officer, General Daniel O'Leary; he was
to take nine hundred of his picked troops, drawn mostly from the
Albion Battalion, and liquidate the revolt. Farmy Henderson,
through her tears, wrote to Cordoba, asking him to be careful, tell-
ing him in the time-worn phrases of love that she would die if any-
thing happened to him.

But Cordoba, again having mistaken popular acclaim for popu-
lar will, found that his army melted away at the first suggestion of
opposition. Outnumbered by O'Leary's soldiers, cut off from rein-
forcements by the cavalry, he lay entrenched in a strong position,
selling each one of the lives of his men dearly, until O'Leary used
an ancient stratagem; he feigned retreat to draw out the enemy.
The hero of Ayacucho tried to keep his raw soldiers from the trap.
It was in vain. They rushed right into a counterattack that cut
them down in droves. Cordoba himself, severely wounded,
crawled off into a house. There he lay in his own blood, sword in
hand, waiting to fight off whoever should appear. Led by inform-
ers, O'Leary soon appeared with his legions. To a young, sandy-
haired legionnaire, Irish-born Rupert Hand, OXeary said, "Sir,
that is the way to the house. If Cordoba is there, kill him."

The nation was shocked by the death of their young hero. It
seemed a great waste, for such as Cordoba were needed in build-
ing up the Republic. All blame fell on Bolivar, and overnight, it
seemed, his popularity reached its nadir. Once more, on the walls
of Bogota, abusive scrawls shouted, Down with Bolivar! Down
with the dictator!

As for Bolivar, painfully riding through the provinces, he was

250 The Four Seasons of Manuela

unaware of the death of Cordoba, or even of the battle that had
taken place. One month after the tragic incident, he was given in-
telligence of it. He was terribly agitated over Cordoba's "pitiful
and tragic terminus/* although he had been estranged from him.
He was plunged to the depths of despair by these deaths of the
Republic's leaders, and by the perfidy that surrounded him:

My grief knows no bounds. Slander strangles me as the ser-
pents strangled Laocoon. I cannot stand it any longer; I am tired,
I have had enough. . . . During twenty years of work, I have
done what I could. Who has the right to demand more of me?
I have passed forty-six years; and the worst of it is that I have
spent these years without being a god, who is above suffering.
I cannot bear more. I cannot bear more. A hundred times a day
my heart tells me so.

The cheers were now hollow echoes. When he at last returned
to the capital on January 15, 1830, he rode through silent rows o
people. The bunting overhead, in the colors of the Republic, said
Long Live Bolivar! The streets had been decorated with arches
laced with laurel; the generals, bemedaled and jackbooted, accom-
panied him to the sound of cannon and the ringing of bells. Urda-
neta had outdone himself. The school children had been given a
holiday. Money, swept up from the all but empty treasury, had
been spent for fireworks, streamers, arches, flags, to create the
Illusion of delirium at the return of the Liberator. But he could see,
on the walls of the houses, freshly posted handbills still dripping
wet with calumny:

It was a never ending line of demonstrators [remembered Bous-
singault]. The long street was lined with hordes of people.

TDon Francisco/' I said to a schoolmaster who was in the
procession, "your pupils are warm patriots."

"They/' said he, indicating the freshly washed brown faces.
"They riot at all. You have noticed the man placed behind them
to administer whippings when they don't shout loudly enough!
These means are infallible/'

So the people cheered, to order. Yet Bolivar was unmoved "by
them. He was ill, his cheeks hollow, his lips livid, and his eyes

And So Manuela 251

too bright in the fevered, tanned face. The people were shocked
by his appearance; they seemed to feel that they were attending, if
not the obsequies of the Republic, at least the Goiterddmmerung
of their hero.

Bolivar was furious over the conditions that he found there in
Bogota. He blamed his ministers for everything, not only for bun-
gling in local affairs, but for needless insults to foreign powers.
For, when the Cabinet had found that General Harrison had been
one of the instigators of Cordoba's revolt, they demanded that he
be withdrawn as minister. But "I wiH leave my post only by
force," said the crusty General, standing, arms akimbo, in front
of the courier. Then he was withdrawn under orders from Wash-
ington. And away, too, went the British Consul Henderson, with
his high-colored little Fanny, who soon forgot her grief over
Cordoba in marrying a London lawyer.

But Bolivar was still angry over the Cabinet' s stupidities. They
had killed Cordoba when he could have been placated; they
caused bad relations with the United States and Great Britain
when their friendship was needed most; they had brought the idea
of monarchy into the plans of Gran Colombia, when they knew
he would not accept it. He tongue-lashed his ministers until they
resigned in a body. Then, shaken with coughing and illness, he
retired to his vOIa, and to the care of his Manuela.

She had never seen him as he was now. He was not only ill,
he remained outwardly indifferent to everything. His physicians
came with increased frequency, yet they were at a loss to prevent
the deep, body-convulsing cough which wracked him. After a fit
of coughing, he would lie back as pallid as death while Manuela
wiped from Ms lips the blood-tinted foam. She spent much of her
time reading to him, when the weather permitted, under the moss-
covered cypress trees. Whether through Manuela's care or through
love, in those weeks he did improve, regaining enough of himself
to welcome General Sucre when te arrived.

Sucre had ridden the thousand miles from Quito to respond to
the last request of Ms friend. He had come to preside over the

252 The Four Seasons of Manuela

new Congress that had been called into action, so that a duly
elected body might decide the destinies of the nation. Sucre! He
was the one complete friend Bolivar had among the military. He
was without personal ambition, and despite his passion for the
cause of liberty he never presumed on his titles, which alone would
have made him unusual in the period. Yet the pace and pattern
of chaos had left their marks on him; his body, never robust, now
seemed emaciated, and his simple, strong face seemed almost
buried in the black hair and side whiskers that cascaded over his
olive-skinned head. But more than fatigue appeared in his great
large eyes, as Manuela noticed at once. What troubled Sucre?
What caused his expressive brown eyes to fill with pensiveness
whenever the conversation lagged?

It was his marriage. He had won every military battle the four
great victories of the wars for independence but he was losing
the battle with himself. The young Marquesa, his wife, had a lover,
a general on his own staff, named Barriga. Sucre only suspected it
there was no proof but the thought unnerved him. He did not
speak of this: honor would not permit it. But he gave all his love
and his passion to his little daughter, Teresa, whom he idolized.
When he had left Quito to ride to Bogota, he had made out a
curious last will and testament, beginning:

At this moment my wife, Mariana, is not pregnant If I should
die, my daughter Teresa will acquire all of my estate; only if she
predeceases me will my wife retain my estates.

With Sucre here to take charge of the Congress, Sim6n Bolivar
did what it had been in his mind to do for some time. On March 1,
he proclaimed his resignation from the Presidency:

Today I have ceased to rule. Listen to my last words. At the
moment when my political career comes to an end, I implore,
I demand in the name of Gran Colombia, that you remain united.

Having dedicated the Republic to anarchy by this action, Boli-
var remained outwardly indifferent. But in his heart he wanted the
people to come to him, to beg him again to take up the office o

And So Manuela 253

President. Then, as the illness consumed him, he allowed himself
to be swept hither and thither by the gusts of his passions. He
would return to France, where he and Manuela could spin out the
remaining years of his life. No! he would be the unifying princi-
pal of Gran Colombia, without holding public office; he would
use his glory to knit the nation together. Again, overcome with
melancholy, he would stuff his ears and refuse to listen to the nar-
rations of chaos, as the reports poured in and Gran Colombia dis-
integrated.

Then like a thunderbolt it came Venezuela had broken away
from Gran Colombia. It had declared itself independent. It denied
Simon Bolivar the right to cross its frontiers, and expunged his
name from its list of heroes. That awakened him out of his
lethargy. He put on his blue and gold uniform and summoned the
still-functioning Cabinet of Ministers out to his villa. No sooner
had all of his old colleagues taken their seats than he launched
forth into a fevered address. He denounced Jose Antonio Paez,
that simple-headed demagogue, for pulling Venezuela from the
union. He demanded that tibe Cabinet restore him to office and
that he be given power to make war on Venezuela.

There was an embarrassed silence. Bolivar had only to look at
their faces to know what thoughts crossed their minds. They had
lost confidence in him and in his infallible touch of victory. An-
other war, and with Venezuela, would be unpopular. Bolivar was
shaken with anger, and strained by the inroads of fever. The Cabi-
net retired to deliberate. Then, unable to face him with their deci-
sion, they sent him a letter instead. It was from Castillo y Rada, a
small man with a small soul, who had served him for years as
Secretary of the Treasury. Bolivar dissolved into fury when he
read it, for its purport could be read only too clearly behind the
polite phrasing. The realities of the moment were obvious. Gran
Colombia was breaking up. All the other states of the Republic
would break away, leaving only the territory of Colombia. All else
was lost. After this painful exordium, the letter went on that a new
government based on this new reality should be formed. It should

254 The Four Seasons of Manuela

be a strong and representative government but It should not
contain Bolivar.

This was the first hint. Bolivar must have understood it; he ex-
ploded in a paroxysm of rage. Then, supported on Manuela's arm,
he went out into the garden, coughing heavily in his cambric
handkerchief.

It fell to his old friends to bring him, a few days later, the fate-
ful message: his continued presence in Bogota, in Colombia, was
a threat to the tranquillity of the nation. Before a new govern-
ment could be formed, he must leave.

Bolivar was to be exiled.

It was a few days before he was to go. He walked in his villa
beside Manuela. There was so much to say, yet he could say little.
The night before, he had given this house to his dear friend Pepe
Paris, who in turn had reassigned it to his daughter, the same
diminutive daughter wbo-.almost married Jean-Baptiste Boussin-
gault. He gave his pictures and mementos of battle to other friends.
He did not know where he was going, and possessions would only
burden him. Jose Pakcios, his blue eyes reddened by his tears,
brought out the silver and gold plate which had been given to
Bolivar at the height of his fame, and catalogued it for sale. Could
it be possible? All it realized was seventeen thousand pesos and
that was all the money that Bolivar possessed in the world. He had
once been the richest man in South America; now all he possessed
in money was this paltry sum from the sale of his silver plate.

'Yet/* said Boussingault, "he had fifteen years of illusions, fifteen
years it is a great deal during the course of one's brief existence."

Bolivar's old friends were now calling on him to make their
farewell. Colonel Posada Gutierrez found him in his garden walk-
ing across the beautiful meadow of the Quinta:

Bolivar's gait was slow and weary; his voice scarcely audible.
We walked along the banks of the brook that wound through the
silent landscape. Bolivar, with folded arms, contemplated the
current the image of human life.

And So Manuel 255

"How much time," he said, "it takes for this water to mix with
the infiniteness of the ocean, even as man in the decomposition
of the grave mixes with the earth from which he comes. . , .
Some parts evaporate like human glory , . ."

Then he threw his hands to his head, pressing Ms temples,
and cried out in a trembling voice, "My glory, rny glory! Why
do they destroy it? Why do they calumniate me?"

The night before the day of his exile had been sleepless for
everyone. All were on the alert. Manuela, a light blanket thrown
over her clothed body, dozed near Bolivar's door. The guard was
doubled. There had been rumors that Bolivar would not depart
alive. And some of his loyal regiments, hearing of his impending
eclipse, had revolted. Officials feared that there might be blood-
letting. All through, the night, Manuela could hear the subdued
voices of the troops outside the villa as they exchanged signs of
recognition. It mattered little. For her there was no sleep. The
future was bare and forbidding. She was unable to accept the de-
cision of his exile; she had fought against it as long as one can fight
against overwhelming odds. The strain had, in these last days, ex-
acted its toll: Manuela was as close to prostration as she ever
allowed herself to come. The future was there one? She had in-
sisted that, this time, she accompany Bolivar, and not be left
behind as in the past All that she wanted, all that she had, was
irrevocably tied to the fortunes of Simon Bolivar.

He refused to allow her this. He did not know where tie was
going. Perhaps he would sail for France, or Jamaica; his course
was not clear. But the moment he knew, lie would send for her.
There was, too, the question of money. All he had was the seven-
teen thousand pesos. True, he had been voted thirty thousand
pesos annually for life from the government; but it was obvious,
from his past actions, that he would refuse it It had been a dread-
ful day for him too. He knew that now his name meant nothing;
the moment he left, the wolves would be upon Manuela, They
made their farewells that night of the 7th of May, in the intimacy
of the villa. She would not accompany him on this kst ride,

256 The Four Seasons of Manuela

In the morning, clear light bathed the hills. The night had
brought a storm to clear the air and give Bogota a fresh, delicious
smell of earth. Then came the sun. A file of horsemen rode up to
the Quinta to wait upon Bolivar. All the leading citizens of Bogota
were there, including many of the diplomats of foreign countries.
They sat silently on their horses, the only sound the occasional
trampling of hoofs. When Bolivar appeared there were subdued
cheers, but he scarcely noticed them as Jose Palacios helped him
mount. With his gnarled hand, the old servant flipped away the
tears that coursed his cheeks, gave a last look at the Quinta, then
followed his master on the road through the city.

The narrow cobbled streets were lined with silent people.
Rumor, carried as it were on the breeze, traveled from house to
house until everyone, without any other notice, knew: their Lib-
erator was being exiled. Their grief now needed no claque; they
sensed what they were losing. Tears fell on many cheeks that day,
and no attempt was made to conceal them. At one comer a little
child ran out in front of Bolivar's horse, stood on tiptoe to give
him a nosegay of flowers. Then she ran quickly back to her moth-
er's skirts, and with great dark eyes watched the cavalcade disap-
pear into the distance.

All along the route horsemen mounted, one by one, and joined
the silent procession, until they numbered almost a hundred.
Everyone who shared Bolivar's victories and defeats was there
everyone except General Sucre. Bolivar had deliberately given
him an incorrect hour of departure, so that they both would be
spared the moment of last farewells. Bolivar was well out of the
city when a courier rode up with a letter. The cavalcade stopped
while he read it:

When I came to your house to accompany you, you had already
departed. Perhaps this is just as well, since I was spared the pain
of a bitter farewell. In this hour, my heart oppressed, I do not
know what to say to you. Words cannot express the feelings of
my soul, but you know my emotions, for you have known that it
was not your power that inspired the wannest feelings in me,

And So Manuela 257

but your friendship. I shall always preserve that friendship what-
ever destiny awaits us, and I flatter myself that you will keep
the opinion you had of me. Adieu, my General, receive as a
token of friendship these tears shed for your absence. Be happy,
wherever you may be, and, wherever you are, you may count on

Your faithful and devoted
SUCRE

Some miles farther on, where the savannahs came to an end and
thick fog enveloped the land, Bolivar raised his emaciated hand
to bring them all to a halt. Jean-Baptiste Boussingault, wearing
the blue uniform of a colonel, was among the group:

The cavalcade stopped between Chipalo and Piedras. It was
the moment for final farewells. When I respectfully approached
Bolivar, to give him a military salute, he stayed my hand; instead,
his arms encircled me in an abrazo. He said, "I shall see you soon."

I knew differently. His face carried the imprint of death; 1
knew that I would never see him again.

One by one, Bolivar embraced all who liad come out with him.
He was dry-eyed, as if the poignant moments had drained him.
Here and there, with his scented handkerchief, he wiped the tears
of an old comrade. Then, as if lie could stand it no longer, he
hoarsely commanded his entourage to mount, and those who were
going with him into exile went ahead into the rolling white blan-
ket of fog.

He put Ms foot in the stirrup, but failed at first to pull himself
up. A friend rushed out to aid him, but lie petulantly flung off the
proffered hand and with great effort mounted his white horse.
Without turning around, lie slowly rode off into the mist. All of
the silent figures uncovered and watched until Bolivar was swal-
lowed up in the void. Then Colonel Patrick Campbell, once a
British Legionnaire, broke the silence. He raised his black busby
and spoke in a voice of deep emotion.

is gone, lie is gone the gentleman of Colombia."

16
"TOUR IMMENSE LOSS"

Guaduas
May 11, 1830
MY LOVE,

I am glad to tell you that I feel well, but I am filled with your
grief and my own over our separation. Mi amor, I love you very
much and I shall love you much more, if you will now be more
reasonable than ever before. Be careful what you do, or you
may ruin yourself, and that means ruin to both of us.

I am always your devoted lover,

BOLIVAK

"Be careful what you do/* Bolivar might just as well have asked
the tributaries of the Amazon to be careful. The attacks against
Manuela started even before the sound of his horse's hoofs died
among the treeless hills. At first there were murmurs; then the
members of the opposition, freed from prison, released their poi-
soned darts. Since there was no Bolivar on whom to lavish their
hate, they fulminated against Manuela Saenz. On the blank walls
of convents billstickers put up their vilifications, and along the
narrow streets of Bogota a barefooted rabble distributed the little
papeluchas which coarsely caricatured her. No one had to be told
that this was the work of her old enemy Vicente Azuero, for no one
in the Republic could match him in the art of vituperation. He had
been released from prison the day that Bolivar departed, and had
received a place in the Cabinet of the coalition government.

They should have known that Manuela would not take this
supinely. She slipped into her uniform, took up her lance, and rode

"Jour Immense Loss' 259

out Into the street. Soon she found an Indian selling the offending
papeluchas. Whereupon she lowered her point, drove it into his
exposed rump, and sent him screaming down the Calle de Comer-
cio. That night her servants ripped down the broadsides as fast as
they were put up on the walls.

Vicente Azuero, growling into his chocolate cup, directed all
his animadversions against Manuela. He was now, after all, Secre-
tary of the Interior, and he decided to stop the grotesque activity
of Manuela's tongue. In the first salvo of the campaign, he de-
manded that Manuela turn over to the government all the papers
in Bolivar's private archives, which she had guarded these many
years. There was no equivocation in her answer:

To your demands . , . may I say that I have nothing, abso-
lutely nothing, in my possession that belongs to the government.
. , . These private papers belong to His Excellency, the Lib-
erator. I will surrender neither these papers nor these books.

And can you show me the law which has outlawed General
Bolivar and sent him into exile?

More than that: in the stillness of the Bogota night, after the
watch had passed, Manuela sent out her servants with handbills,
which they scattered all around the city broadsides urging the
return of Bolivar. In the morning, when Vicente Azuero walked
to his office, he saw along the buildings, like the erratic footprints
of a wall-walking monster of sedition, notices which, proclaimed
in crude type: Long Lwe Bolivar, Founder of the Republic!

In an awesome rage, Azuero personally directed the removal of
the offending bills. Then he stormed into the Lord Mayor's office,
to demand that something be done about this Manuela Saenz:

"There is known evidence that a Negress, dressed in a white
shortcoat and broad hat, affixed these subversive pasquinades on
the buildings alongside of the Cathedral, and on the walls of the
Church of San Francisco and that the Negress responsible for
this act belongs to Maniiela Sienz."

No one believed that Manuela was a mere 'lovable f ooT; there
was obviously more behind these acts than the childish joy of cans-

260 The Four Seasons of Manuela

ing discomfort. She was purposely undermining public confidence
in the coalition government. With General Urdaneta, who re-
mained in the shadows, she was trying to effect its fall and to bring
about a recall of Simon Bolivar to the Presidency, She did not
have to create a new chaos; it was developing by itself, for with-
out the guiding light of Bolivar's name the country was lost in
the trough of particularism. No one paid much attention to the
central authorities; each province was going its own way. In the
meanwhile Manuela was paying court to the soldiers of the El
Callao Regiment, composed of veterans of the battles of Peru. Her
aim was to keep fresh in their minds the victories in which Simon
Bolivar had led them; for they would be needed when he returned
from exile.

If any in Bogota believed that the sacred festival of Corpus
Christi would bring an armistice in the battle of words, it was only
because they did not know the depth of the passions involved, or
the settled malignity of Vicente Azuero's nature. To most of the
folk, the festival of God transcended politics. The city was full of
people mainly simple half -Indian peasants, barefooted and
wearing their ruanas who had come in to see the parade of the
Saints, and to take part in the holy rituals. On the last day of the
festival the Saints had been carried into the Cathedral, and the
great square in front of it was cleared for a fireworks exhibition.

Manuela had spent that morning composing her next diatribe
against the government, and she had gone to the printing plant of
Bruno Espinosa to see it through the press. Jonotas, dressed for
once as a woman, was out circulating in the plaza, drinking chicha
and enjoying, with the rest of the bumpkins, the free-and-easies of
the fair. Near the fountain Indian workmen were erecting a bam-
boo platform; here the pyrotechnics would be displayed. Under
what appeared to simulate a fort they were making two crude fig-
ures, also of bamboo. Later fireworks would be attached to these,
and lighted for one confiscating moment. One figure was a man;
he was to be in uniform, a general. There was no doubt it was

"Your Immense Loss" 261

Bolivar. The other, in terrible caricature, with a face like a harpy
eagle, was developing into a woman. There was no question who
she was to be. The people massed about the platform, warmed by
the chicha, were roaring their approval. Jonotas moved through
the crowd, hurried the short distance to Manuela's apartment, and
told her what she had seen.

"They are going to caricature the Liberator and you in the
plaza."

By midafternoon the plaza was almost deserted, except for In-
dians who, like a file of harvester ants, moved back and forth from
the fountain with their sienna-colored water jugs. A squad of sol-
diers in green uniforms of the Republic stood about the pyro-
technic platform, resting on their bayoneted rifles. The bamboo
dummies were completed; the fireworks, tied with crude twine,
were attached and ready for the spark that would ignite the flam-
ing calumny. Under the man was a huge sign: DESPOTISM AND
BOLIVAE. And under the female: TYRANT AND MANILLA SAENZ.

At first the soldiers paid no attention to the three mounted fig-
ures bearing down on them; they were hussars, armed as usual
with iron-tipped lances. Only when the leading rider was before
them, and they were looking into the black tunnels of a brace of
pistols, did they know it was Manuela Saenz. She directed the
slaves to destroy the figures. A rope tied to the fragile bamboo
pulled them out of place, and then Manuela took aim and dis-
charged a pistol into the mass of fireworks. There was a roar like
a cannonade, the horses reared back, a soldier slashed at the mount
of Jonotas with his bayonet. Manuela put spurs to her steed, and in
a hail of badly fired bullets sped away across the plaza.

The next morning Manuela was singled out for denunciation.
Vicente Azuero spent the night preparing an early edition of his
papelucha, the Conductor, where in the boldest type he demanded
the guillotine for Manuela Saenz:

We understand that the Municipal Corporation prepared a
castle of fireworks ornamented with figures . . . which were cre-
ated to excite patriotism in the hearts of the people and persuade

262 The Four Seasons of Manuela

them to hatred of tyranny. But a petulant woman, who was al-
ways in the van of General Bolivar and who goes about dressed
in the daytime in male clothing, came out with her creatures,
similarly clothed in a style which insulted all moral laws. This
woman . . . extended her insolence toward the whole city.
Dressed as a hussar she went to the plaza with two or three of
her servants, whom she keeps in her house with money given
her by the state, assaulted the guards, set off the fireworks with
a pistol she carried, and then declaimed against the government,
against liberty and against the people. For attacking the guard
she should be punished under a military ordinance and suffer the
penalty of death. Instead the Vice-President called on her. Noth-
ing produced so strange and lamentable a reaction as when the
Vice-President personally went to the house of this foreigner to
appease her . . .

The paper war was becoming more bitter. Manuela was creating
just the confusion that was necessary to show the impotence of this
interim government. But the attacks were too personal now not to
answer in kind. She put up her lance and composed a stirring
appeal:

Bogota, 20th of June, 1830
To THE PUBLIC:

Because of the opinions held by those who attack me, I am
obliged to speak out to the people, lest my silence would make
me a criminal.

I have offended no one in high office. What I have done is not
dishonorable. Those who calumniate me do so because they are
unable to persecute me legally; this is my vindication, since every-
one knows how I have been insulted, slandered, vilified. . . ,

I confess that I am not tolerant . . . but my serenity rests on
the knowledge of the lightness of the cause of His Excellency,
the Liberator. I shall never, never retreat a single step in that
respect, from the friendship and gratitude I hold toward General
Bolivar; and if anyone believes that to be a crime it demon-
strates the poverty of his soul

To the author of the piece in La Aurora, who should know
that freedom of the press does not necessarily mean freedom to
attack personalities to him I answer in these words: He has
vituperated me in the vilest of forms; I forgive him, but may I

"Jour Immense Loss"' 263

be allowed a small observation? Why do they call those to the
south "brother," and me a foreigner? Such as he can write all
they want to my country is the whole of the American con-
tinent; I was bom under the equatorial line.

The dead are very readily open to reconciliation not so the
living. Manuela was surrounded by hate which bordered on the
pathological. Her detractors seemed to distill scandal from every
pore. Handbills vilifying her loated around the city like confetti,
they were stuffed into the hands of people emerging from church;
soldiers carried the papeluchas at the ends of their bayonets like
billets; they were everywhere, pillorying Manuela with vitriol and
printer's ink. But in her there was no retreat; she stood her ground
and struck back. The spectacle of Manuela Saenz standing off the
pack, a woman fighting for the man she loved, now made an im-
pression on many in Bogota. Manuela had aid from an unexpected
quarter, from those who were once her greatest detractors, the
women of the city:

It is urged by many that Senora Manuela Saenz should be sent
to prison or into exile . . . but the government should remember
that when she had, as is well known, a tremendous influence
she used it for the public good, before and after that famous
night of the 25th of September. We, the women of Bogota, pro-
test against the inflammatory libels which appear against this
lady on the walls of all the streets.

This touch of reason did not end it. Every day the crisis grew as
the government found itself unable to cope with public unrest
The hurricane of handbills and inflammatory papeluchas still
whirled about the city, with Manuela the target. Every night some
billsticker plastered new attacks on ter on the walls of Bogota
and every morning they were torn down. The women of Bogota,
this time under the title of "Liberal Women/' tried again:

We honor, although we may disagree with, the sentiments that
have been manifested by one of our sex, . . .

Senora Saenz, of whom we wrote, is certainly no delinquent.
Insulted and provoked in various ways by people she has not

264 The Four Seasons of Manuela

offended these insults have caused great irritation . . . she has
been exasperated into imprudence. But imprudence is not a crime.
Manuela Saenz has violated no laws, she has attacked the rights
of no citizen.

And if Senora Saenz has written or shouted "Long live Bolivar/'
where is the law which prohibits this?

The persecution of this lady has its origin in base and ignoble
passions. Alone, without family in this city, she should be an ob-
ject of commiseration and esteem rather than the victim of per-
secution. What heroism she has shown! What magnanimity! We
hope that the heavens will treasure sentiments as noble as those
which have been uttered by Manuela Saenz, and that they will
serve as an example for all of us.

The government was almost ready to consider the validity of
these sentiments, the President prepared to take action, when a
scurrilous pamphlet descended upon them. It was called The
Tower of Babel, and it was a frontal attack on the government,
striking at its ineffectiveness and its anarchy. It revealed secrets
that only someone who had access to high sources could know.
The writer was anonymous, the signature merely "A Friend of
Bolivar ." But the printer's name was on the paper, and soon Bruno
Espinosa was dragged in by his black neckstock. The threat of the
bastinado, a twist of the thumbscrew, and Espinosa screamed out
the name of the author of the pamphlet. Then he collapsed.

To THE ALDERMAN OF THE CATHEDRAL DISTRICT,
SENOR DOMINGO DURAN:

In virtue of the aforesaid legal authority invested in me, you
will proceed to arrest and bring to prison MANUELA SAENZ, the
authoress of the imprint entitled The Tower of Babel, who is
accused of inflammatory and seditious acts. You will proceed
immediately to reduce to prison the said Manuela Saenz and
the moment this is done you will verify this with the under-
signed.

ISIDORO CARMZOZO, JUDGE
BogotA, July 19, 1830

Domingo Duran set off bravely for the Plazuela de San Carlos.
He armed the largest of his bailiffs with pikes, and as a special

"Your Immense Loss" 265

precaution strapped around Ms own potbelly a saber so large that
It dragged the ground behind him. He lined up his men at the
bottom of the apartments facing the Jesuit church; then alone he
mounted the stairs to Manuela's door, holding in front of him the
warrant for her arrest. Where he had expected resistance, he met
none at all. The door was opened and he was courteously invited
into the lady's bedroom. There she lay in charming deshabille, a
moistened cloth across her forehead, while her one free hand was
massaged by Jonotas. Domingo Duran presented the warrant, but
she did not even read it; instead she asked him if, gentleman that
he was, he would be so ungallant as to expose to public gaze a
woman so ill that she lay near death's door. Domingo Duran had
not expected this. He had no instructions for it. And as Manuela
in a low voice pleaded her illness, the confused man backed out
the door, went down the stairs, and returned to his office, never
realizing that he had failed to execute his orders. He reported to
the judge what he had seen; the woman was ill, certainly His
Excellency would not expect . . .

The judge was beside himself.

"The reason you gave me that Manuela Saenz was ill and
that you were therefore unable to complete your orders to bring
her to prison has no validity at all. There are hospitals in our
prisons. Therefore, in virtue of this, you are ordered to bring to
the prison-hospital at once the said Manuela."

Once more Domingo Duran, fortified by a heavy draught of rum
and looking like a rotund Silenus, pulled himself up the stairs to
Manuela's apartment. He would not again be orally seduced.

This time he ran into a different Manuela, She stood at the top
of the stairs in her hussar's uniform. The collar of the pelisse was
open, revealing, had he had time to see it, her panting bosom. In
her right tand was a naked saber.

^Senor Alderman, if you set one more foot above the other, I
will run you through and make a widow of your fat Senora Duran/*

Don Domingo fell backward down the stairs, almost taking with
him some of his wooden-headed bailiffs in the process. He beat

266 The Four Seasons of Manuela

a hurried retreat, looking over Ms shoulder to see if that amazon
still stood guard. In a half hour he was back. This time he brought
the Lord Mayor, the judge, ten soldiers, and eight convicts who
were granted leave from prison for the capture of the redoubtable
Manuela.

Of course the commotion attracted a crowd. This was precisely
what the government did not want. The arrest was to have been
made quietly, effectively, without publicity; but now it had de-
veloped into some sort of opera boufe. Half of the police force,
and the Lord Mayor himself, to arrest a single woman! The curious
crowd blocked the street and flowed over into the Plazuela; some
even stood on the fountain, braving the cool stream of water, to
have a better place for the show.

The balcony was gained. There was no Manuela. They tried the
doors, and found them locked. So Don Domingo applied his fat
belly to them, others pushed from behind, and they flung at the
doors. The portals gave way, half of the attackers fell into the
room; when they recovered, they were looking into the barrels of
two brass Turkish pistols. Manuela stood motionless. No one es-
sayed a move toward her; there was a look on her face that sug-
gested no compromise on her part. ("Be careful what you do," her
lover had written > "or you may ruin yourself, and that means ruin
to both of us." ) It was a tense moment. Then Pepe Paris, warned of
the imbroglio, arrived, wriggling his way through the press of sol-
diers and people. She liked Pepe Paris; he was properly punctili-
ous. So, without once lowering her pistols, she talked over a com-
promise. Manuela Saenz would surrender to save the face of the
government, which already had lost more prestige by this affair
than it could gain. She would submit to arrest, and accompany
the bailiffs to prison. The arraignment would be merely formal.
She would be released immediately. In this fashion, on her own
terms, Manuela again went to jail.

Disintegration had come, as Sim6n Bolivar had said it would
come. The province of Venezuela, which had broken away from

"Jour Immense Loss" 267

the union, was involved in civil war. Ecuador, which also had
withdrawn from Gran Colombia, was having its troubles. All over
the land the caudillos were at work, breaking the union into small
segments which they ruled with the methods of Janizaries. Bogota
now had no more power over its citizens than it had over the
moon solstices. Soldiers murdered their officers, officers executed
orders without consulting their superiors. Everyone seemed to
carry a shibboleth on his person which read, "This citizen can do
whatever he damn well pleases."

Somehow the government survived. True, it lacked identity;
for the idea of continuity demanded identity, and the composition
of the cabinet changed with each crisis. With Bolivar gone they
lacked the ideal, there was no one strong enough to weld all the
discordant parts together. Each day Manuela thought would be
the government's last, but somehow it staggered along. And when
it finally toppled, the push came from an unexpected source. A
single pistol shot brought down the whole structure.

"General Sucre, on his way back to Quito, has been assassinated
in the Bemiecos Mountains.**

Sucre had been warned, "Do not return to Quito without an
escort." He had, it was true, no known personal enemies. Yet he
was generally believed to be Bolivar's heir apparent, even though
he deprecated public office.

"I do not refuse to serve the State," he had said, "but I wish
to know the system and the aim. For a long time we have been
without both, and I am too tired and too ill to work at hazard/ 7

Still Sucre was regarded as the embodiment of the Bolivarian
ideal, and for that reason, if not for others more obscure, he was a
marked man. Before his decision to leave without guard, Manuela
had shown him a cryptic bit in one of the scandal sheets of Bogota.
It read, "Perhaps Colonel Obando in Southern Colombia will do
to Sucre what we have done to Bolivar.'*

Yet he did not believe himself threatened. He smiled at Manu-
ela's warning, forgetting that she was, in her own way, something
of a Cassandra. The assassins knew his route, it was the shortest

268 The Four Seasons of Manuela

way to Quito. In the Berraecos Mountains a road, cut deep by the
plowing footsteps of time, snaked through the scrub forest. There,
on a fog-filled morning, a single shot rang out, and Sucre dropped
from his horse. The hole in his head was as large as a fist. He was
dead before his body reached the ground. His Indian servant took
one look at the cadaver, put spurs to his mount and disappeared.

The news, relayed to Bolivar on the coast, broke his silence.

"My God/' he cried out, "they have shed the blood of Abel. It
is impossible to live in a country where the most famous generals
are cruelly and barbarously murdered, the very men to whom
America owes its freedom. ... I believe the purpose of the crime
was to deprive the fatherland of my successor. I can no longer
serve such a country/*

Did Bolivar really mean what he said? Or was his expression,
"I can no longer serve such a country/' only an exclamation of grief
and anger? For now the nation had need of him. The interim gov-
ernment had fallen and General Urdaneta had taken over, holding
his power in trust for the return of Simon Bolivar. Throughout the
autumn they waited in Bogota for an answer to their pleas. They
begged him to make a public statement, anything that might give
them some hope of his early return and his resumption of the
Presidency. Time was pitiless, and time too was important; then
why did he not answer? And as the rain-filled November days
came upon them, Manuela's worry became personal. It had been
weeks since she had had a letter from him, and rumors floated up
from the coast that he was very ill. But she had dismissed them:

The Santanderistas may as well give up hope because the
Liberator is immortal. He will never die, even if they should burn
him. And at that, aren't they really lucky? But just think if he
should die. The wretched opposition! Everyone would choose the
Liberator as his saint. Even I, if I were to be so remiss as to sur-
vive him, even I would make him my saint, and despair over his
death would perhaps drive me to do all manner of rash things.

But just think if he should die . . .

"Jour Immense Loss' 269

She did not know, no one in Bogota knew, that all they were
doing was in vain. The neo-Bolivarian government would some-
how have to move along without its symbol The Liberator was
dying.

And now it was hard upon him. He resisted at first with un-
fathomable strength, believing that his will, that will which had
conquered the space and men of South America, could win out in
this last struggle. He refused all medical aid, and sat in the heat
of the coast wrapped in blankets, with his teeth chattering as if
he were crossing the frozen paramos of the Andes. He maintained
this fiction with approaching death. Between spasms of pain he
dictated letters, a continuous flow of correspondence, until his
strength was sapped, then he sank his livid face into the pillow
and coughed blood-stained sputum into the cloth held by his
nephew, Fernando Bolivar. Now he knew he must place himself
under a physician's care; he thought of Jamaica, and dispatched a
letter to an old friend, Maxwell Hyslop, who had helped him there
during his exile in 1814. Then, to be ready for the voyage, he was
taken aboard a brig to Santa Marta. In this Colombian harbor,
in the encircling blue of the Caribbean, Simon Bolivar was ex-
amined by a Dr. Night, from an American ship, as well as by a
French medico miraculously present in the little port. Dr. Night,
whose name was its own augury, agreed with the Frenchman: the
Liberator was moribund, he could not survive a long voyage. Oa
December 1, 1830, he was carried ashore.

Santa Marta lies in a small crescent-shaped bay, framed by
swishing coconut fronds. Two moldering Spanish forts, which
played their part in the growth of empire, stand guard. The pel-
lucid Caribbean Sea reflects the lapis lazuli of the sky. Its single
row of buildings bends to the shape of the bay and follows the
Malecon, the waterfront drive, until progress is stopped by the
tumbling hills of the Andes. In the hinterland rise the verdurous
mountains of Santa Marta, culminating in the snow-covered Sierra

270 The Four Seasons of Manuela

Nevada. At the foot of the rise Is fertile land, transformed by the
hand of man into fields of sugar cane.

For a week Simon Bolivar lay there in torment. His eyes were
glassy, his skin dry and parched, and his voice sometimes so hoarse
and feeble that he could barely whisper. Then a moment of irony.
An old royalist, Don Joaquin de Mier, who once could have been
his enemy, heard of the plight of the great Bolivar, and rode in
person to offer the use of his own hacienda a few miles distant
from the town. Tenderly, as if he were carrying a child, Jose
Palacios gathered up his master in his arms and bore him out to a
straw-lined oxcart. An oxcart! It was to be Simon Bolivar's last
living ride.

San Pedro Alejandrino was a sugar hacienda. The one-storied
house, red-tiled as was the custom, with cool ceramic floors,
nestled among wide-buttressed trees. The scent of tamarinds was
about it, and the pungent odor of sugar-cane juice being made into
brown sugar. The furniture of the house expressed the tasteful
opulence of its Spanish owner; large ornate commodes, richly
carved rosewood refectory tables, massive pieces of solid mahog-
any, and beds whose elaborate posts were covered with mosquito
netting as delicate as gossamer. In one of these beds, in the mas-
ter's bedroom, they placed what was left of the body of Simon
Bolivar.

The young French doctor was summoned, made his examina-
tion, and called Bolivar's staff into the salon. Dr. Alexandre Rev-
erend, tall, serious, and restrained, came quickly to the point.
The Liberator was in the last stages of tuberculosis, there was no
doubt about his diagnosis and the prognosis was death. He,
Dr. Reverend, would issue daily bulletins, but in the meantime
those who surrounded the Liberator were not to allow their faces
or manner to reveal what they knew.

For a moment there seemed a dim hope. In the new atmosphere
there was a return of strength. Bolivar was able to prop himself up,
and began to take again an interest in all matters. Once more there
were letters. He called in his secretary, dictated several documents

"Jour Immense Loss' 271

on the politics o the country, on the people, on his destiny. Only
once in a while did he allow himself to betray his weakness by say-
ing, *1 am very ill/* Then the cardiac debility set in; he grew con-
fused, then optimistic in his self-deception. He believed that a
long sea voyage would effect a cure, and he thought of the West
Indies.

<f l shall go to Jamaica to cure myself."

Then he curtly ordered Jose Palacios to prepare for the trip.

"Well, let us go. What are we waiting for? Bring my luggage
on board. They do not want us in this country /*

So it went on for a week.

On December 11, his mind suddenly became normal again. Now
he knew. Although keeping up the fiction and preserving his
bienseance to the end, he now accepted his condition, and ap-
proached death in full consciousness. But he made no one aware
of his knowledge until he called in his amanuensis to take a last
letter to a friend:

I write these lines in the last moments of my life to ask you
for the only proof of friendship that you can still give me.

Then, as the doctor suggested, he put his affairs in order. He
allowed the Bishop to speak to him of the state of his soul, lie
dictated his last will and testament. Then, and only then, did
his thoughts turn in upon himself. Dr. Reverend did all he could
to make these last moments free of pain; and to him, as he hovered
near, Bolivar spoke.

"Why did you come to America?'*

"For the sake of liberty, Your Excellency ."

"And you found it here, Monsieur le Docteur?"

"Certainly, Your Excellency/*

"Oh, then you have been more fortunate than I."

Then again the cardiac weakness; his mind wandered, and he
talked of going to France with his doctor, to live under the tri-
color. Next a return of reason, and then petulance. Smoking
irritated him. In the kst years he had allowed some of his com-

272 The Four Seasons of Manuela

pardons to smoke in Ms presence, as lie had never done before.
Now the old irritations returned in force. When his dear friend
General Sarda sat beside him during his last moments, he
smoked a pipe. Bolivar opened his eyes and hoarsely barked in a
commanding voice,

"Sarda, move your seat a bit farther away. No . . . more,
more/'

Sarda, hurt by the brittle tone, said with a touch of irritation,
"My General, the odor of tobacco never bothered you when it
came from Manuela . . ?

A look of infinite sadness came over Bolivar and his eyes
brimmed with tears.

"Manuela! Ah, then . . /*

And Manuela she was now distraught, for there had been no
letters for weeks. She knew how long it took a letter to go down
the entire length of the Magdalena Biver by canoe, and then
across to where Simon Bolivar was; yet there had been no answers
to the letters of General Urdaneta either. Rumors kept reaching
the city that Bolivar was very ill, near death suppose they were
true, and not inventions of his political enemies? He had asked
her not to come to him, but she now felt that she must go. But she
agreed with General Urdaneta that they would make one last
attempt to get an answer before she made the trip. This time they
summoned no ordinary courier. Manuela prevailed on Peroux
de Lacroix to undertake the journey. He was Bolivar's confidant;
his secret Diary of Bucaramanga detailed the frank discussions
he had had with Bolivar of all these eventful years. Still Peroux
de Lacroix had revealed nothing. He could be trusted. He was
also a friend of Manuela, and he wished to relieve her of con-
suming anxiety. He left Bogoti at a gallop on November 29,
and within the second week of his ride he arrived at .the coast.
There he learned that Bolivar was dying in Santa Marta. Taking
a small coastal boat, he arrived at the port with the dawn, just
as the church bells were plangently tolling in the day. As he

"Your Immense Loss" 273

picked his way through the small groups standing mutely about,
he heard Bolivar's last proclamation being read aloud in front of
the printer's office:

COLOMBIANS:

You have witnessed my efforts to establish liberty where for-
merly tyranny prevailed. I have labored unselfishly, sacrificing
both my fortune and my tranquillity. When I became convinced
that you mistrusted the integrity of my intentions, I renounced my
power. My enemies have abused your credulity and have tram-
pled on what I have held so sacred my reputation and my love
of liberty, I have been sacrificed to my persecutors; they have
brought me to the brink of the grave; I forgive them.

At this moment of my departure from among you, my heart
tells me that I should express my last wishes. I aspire to no
other glory than the consolidation of Gran Colombia.

Colombians: My last wishes are for the happiness of my coun-
try. If my death can contribute anything toward the reconcilia-
tion of the conflicting parties for the unification of the country,
I shall go to my grave in peace.

Now even Manuela heard it. The word came on the panting
breath of Indians as they climbed the Andes, it filtered up with
people arriving in canoes along the Magdalena River. Bolivar was
ill and perhaps dying. For two weeks she awaited a reply, know-
ing that it could not come that quickly, hoping that it would;
then she moved down from Bogota, two days* horseback ride, to
the river port of Honda. There she made ready for the long
journey down to the coast. A large dugout canoe, covered with
a tolla of banana leaves, was prepared; eight Indian paddlers were
found; Jonotas moved about getting food for the trip. All was
ready now for the descent. Manuela was about to step into the
pirogue when a soldier rode up on a mud-splattered horse. He
saluted, dug into his soiled jacket, and pulled out a letter. It was
from Peroux de Lacroix, and dated from Cartagena, December 18,
1830.

Her eyes fell on the last sentence:

"Allow me, gracious lady, to mingle my tears with yours over
your immense loss."

274 The Four Seasons of Manuela

Manuela sank slowly to the ground, looked out on the flowing
muddy river; then, through her tears, she read the whole letter:

MY RESPECTED AND SORROWFUL LADY,

I promised to write you and speak only the truth. Now I have
finished your charge, and I shall now bring you the most fated
of notices.

I arrived at Santa Marta on December 12 and left at once for
the hacienda where I saw the Liberator. His Excellency was al-
ready then in a terrible state and fatally ill. I stayed in San Pedro
until the 16th, and when I left, His Excellency was then in the
last state of agony all his friends surrounding him, including
myself, were reduced to tears. About him were Generals Mon-
tiUa, Silva, Portocarrero, Infante; Colonels Oraz, Paredes, Wilson;
Captain Ibarra, Lieutenant Fernando Bolivar and some other
friends*

Yes, my sorrowful lady; when I left, this great man was ready
to quit this ungrateful earth and pass on to the mansions of the
dead, there to take Ms seat in posterity and immortality, side
by side with the heroes who have figured most on this miserable
earth. I repeat to you, with a sentiment made more deep by my
enlivening pain and with a heart filled with wounded bitterness,
that I left the Liberator, on the 16th, in tranquil agony, but in
which he cannot long endure. I am waiting any moment now for
the fated notice. Meanwhile I am filled with agitation, with sad-
ness, with tears for the father of our country, the unhappy and
great Bolivar, killed by the perversity, the ingratitude of all of
those who were his debtors and who received from him so many
proofs of generosity. This then is the sad and dire notice of what
I myself saw, and it is now my duty to send it to you. I hope that
the heavens, which contain more justice than displayed by men,
will look down on poor Colombia. . . ,

Allow me, gracious lady, to mingle my tears with yours over
your immense loss.

The letter dropped from Manuela's hand. A gust picked it up
and whirled it tumbling along the banks of the silted river.
Jonotas ran after it, reached it before it fell into the stream. But
when she turned to give the letter back to her mistress, Manuela
had already mounted and was slowly making her way back into
the hills.

Winter

The Years 1830-1856
PART FO UR

Paita

17

THE GRAY CLIFFS
OF PAITA

IHE SEAPORT of Paita, anchored in the wasteland of the Peruvian
desert, faced the Pacific. Before it was a half -moon-shaped bay
and the limitless expanse of the blue sea and the blue sky. The
very existence of the town made jest of man's expedient nature; it
was waterless, treeless, and desolate worse than the desolation
above Idumea. At its back, at its postern that fronted the desert,
were high gray cliffs of bare rocks, frayed and crumbling and
beyond that the great Peruvian desert, a rainless land withering
under a pitiless sun. On the downslope of the gray cliffs were the
dwellings of the poor, a step in living not much higher than the
shelters of troglodytes. Constructed of adobe and arranged in no
special order, the huts looked like the mud nests of barn swallows.
Paita itself the "Payta-town" of the American whalers was
a single street and a wharf. Quaint shops and dwellings lined both
sides of the only road, buildings one- and two-storied, constructed
like wicker baskets of woven cane withes, thinly plastered with
mud and pastelled in chromatic hues. The walls of the houses
were paper-thin, so fragile that one could push one's hand
through them. The single thoroughfare was gray dust; thrown up
by every passing foot to form a powdery, pumice-gray cloud over-
head, it left a film over everything living and dead. Even the
souls of the people seemed dust-colored. The only other living
things in Payta-town (if one excepted the meager population and

278 The Four Seasons of Manuela

a few misshapen little trees, kept alive by drops of sacrificed
water) were the legions of repulsive black buzzards and myriads
of white-bellied termites.

Yet Paita was in fact something of a nirvana. It knew neither
spring nor autumn, offering only winter to the spirit. There was an
eternal sameness that gave to those who knew nothing else some-
thing of the relaxation of a soporific; and to those who came from
outside, agitated in body or soul, it provided a merciful narcosis.
Beyond the reach of time, it had nothing of time's ameliorating
influence.

Paita had been founded in the springtime of the New World by
Francisco Pizarro, as a port in which to unload the weapons of war
for the conquest of the Inca. But time's passing had left no im-
press on it the periodic conflagrations and the termites saw to
that The northernmost port in Peru, it had been in the eventful
past die place where each newly arriving viceroy debarked with
his retinue; for the coastal currents were strong, and the journey
south by road saved an interminable voyage. Later Paita became
the port for the cities that lay beyond the desert, and by 1835, in
one of its periodic upthrusts, it was the last port of call for whaling
ships. Whalers out of New Bedford victualed here; water, brought
sixty miles in casks, was put on shipboard for the long Pacific haul.

The limbo for expatriates was also in Paita. The spate of revolu-
tions and counterrevolutions that convulsed the new republics
brought many a politician here in banishment. Its isolation and its
desolation made it an ideal Elba; it was six hundred miles from
Lima, so that the government had only nominal control over it,
and it was hardly more than one hundred miles to the ports of
Ecuador. Such contact as it had with the outside world was pro-
vided by the whaling ships, and by smaller coastal vessels that
brought the merchandise to sell to the whalers. There was nothing
here to arouse the ogre of politics; Paita was as near to death as
one could get on this living earth.

Where the shaky wharf entered the one street of Payta-town
stood a building well known to American whalers. It leaned crazily

The Gray Cliffs of Paita 279

to one side, and its wickerwork showed through the cracked and
broken plaster like the ribs of a stripped whale. Its ground floor
was a small store, where garlands of garlic hung from the ceiling,
and cakes of brown sugar drew a veritable hive of buzzing bees.
All sorts of oddments beloved by sailors were offered for sale, but
the main bait was tobacco in dried leathery leaf, cigarillos, and
long death-dealing cigars. Above the entrance was a sign as
crazily angled as the leaning buildings of Paita:

TOBACCO
English Spoken

MANXJELA SAENZ

She sat in the doorway crocheting. The well-modeled fingers,
still pretty though not so well kept as in the past, flew in and out
among the threads forming a beautiful pattern. Her coiffure had
not altered either; the two strands of the lustrous hair were woven
across the top of her head like a tiara, and in it, as always, was one
small pink rose, which an aged gallant, one knew not how,
managed to bring her every other day.

Her face still remained arresting, despite the slight heaviness
which passing time had brought around the chin. Her dark eyes
were bright, but they had lost their mischievous gleam. There
was a placidity about her that transformed her entire being. She
seemed utterly at peace. The wheel of Manuela's fate had now
come full circle. On this October day in 1837 she had made an
irrevocable decision; she would remain in exile. She Lad refused
a safe conduct to return to Ecuador:

What terrible anathema of hell had been communicated to me
when the government ordered me from my country. , . .

But my decision now is definite; I will not return to the soil
of my country. It is, as you well understand, my friend, easier
to destroy than to make anew. This order for my repatriation
cannot now revive my deep affection for my country and for my
friends. Now it is no longer possible.

But one thing is certain. Paita or Lima, Mamiela will always

280 The Four Seasons of Manuela

be to you the Manueia whom yon knew in 1822. Nothing gives
me greater peace than the tranquillity of my country, and nothing
gives me greater joy than tranquillity.

The joy of tranquillity . . . Now she had reached it through the
fire, and with that came an alteration in character. She sat alone
in her emptiness, in the ashes of her life, bereft of the one thing in
tie whole world that to her was worth having. What had brought
about this transformation? It had been the experience of the
flames, for she had been burnt at the stake of human opinion. Now,
with Simon Bolivar dead, his name execrated in all the places over
the land, she could only say, "When he lived, I loved Bolivar.
Dead, I venerate him.'*

For it was not only Simon Bolivar she had lost, when he died in
1830, but a way of life, direction, an objective. Her world seemed
to fall apart on the day she received that letter telling of his death.
She had her servants catch and bring to her the most lethal of
serpents, the death-dealing fer-de-lance; and she provoked it to
bite her, as she desired it should, on the right shoulder:

I arrived at Guaduas at night [wrote Boussingault], and
Colonel Acosta, at whose house I alighted, came out to me cry-
ing aloud that Manuelita was dying, that she had been bitten by
one of the most venomous of snakes.

Was it an attempt at suicide, did she want to die like Cleo-
patra?

I went to her house, where I found her stretched out on a sofa,
her right arm hanging down swollen to the shoulder. How beau-
tiful Manuelita was. . . .

Immediately after the bite she was made to take some warm
rum beverage. It is the remedy employed by the people of this
country, for it is believed that inebriation stops the action of the
poison. I applied a cataplasm to the arm . . . Manuelita went to
sleep, and the next day she was well. I left her with the belief
that she had made a deliberate attempt on her life.

Bogota was a purgatory for her. With the Liberator gone, with-
out the fear of reprisals from his avenging spirit, attacks against
her came from all sides. Within a few months after Bolivar had

The Gray Cliffs of Patia 281

been burled in the vaults of the Cathedral at Santa Marta, his old
enemy Santander returned to Bogota, and to power. It was at
this point that Manuela 7 s friends advised her to leave the city.
She sold her jewels for a mere thousand pesos, and moved her
entire retinue bag and baggage to Guanacas del Arroyo. Still the
removal of her inflammable personality did not alter their sus-
picions toward her; Santander suspected her of being the rallying
point of his opposition. The bloodletting did not stop. All those
who were suspected of plotting against the new government were
summarily tried and shot. Nor could Manuela escape. She was
openly accused:

They say that my house, where I live on the Sabana, is a ren-
dezvous of all the malcontents. When my friends visit me, must
I first ask them if they are content or discontent?

Santander gives me an unimaginable valor, saying that I have
the capacity for the most monstrous of deceptions.

What I really am is a formidable character, friend of my
friends, enemy of my enemies; I have nothing in common with
this miserable Santander.

All this was very clever, but it would have been cleverer still if
Manuela had not said it. On January 1, 1834, Santander signed the
decree that sent her into exile. He gave her three days to leave
Bogota. Manuela against the gods! It could not last long. She re-
sisted, but a small army of bailiffs, soldiers, and ex-convicts seized
ter, trussed her up, and in a brief time she and her slaves still
in hussar's uniform were conducted under guard down the
Magdalena River.

It was the long days in the dungeon at Cartagena, during the
early months of 1834, that brought about the first metamorphosis
in Manuela. Walls > cells, thick-barred windows, had heretofore
meant nothing to her; she could always get around them, even
through them. There had been something to fight for; outside,
somewhere, there had been Simon Bolivar. Now the bars were
impregnable. The fortress, built in the sixteenth century, was on a
spit of land which it was beyond the stratagems of Manuela to

282 The Four Seasons of Manuela

bridge. She was Isolated, alone, abandoned beyond aid or hope.
When an English vessel arrived and brought her off, under guard,
she found herself on the way to the island of Jamaica to per-
petual exile from her native land. On that green isle she was met
by Maxwell Hyslop, Bolivar's old friend, who had helped the
Liberator in his days of exile twenty years earlier. Now he aided
Manuela. But there was no happiness here for her, no associations
and she longed for her native land. On May 6, 1835, she ad-
dressed herself to her old friend General Flores, President of
Ecuador:

I wait for this to arrive in your hands from this island. I wrote
you often from Bogota, yet without the smallest of answers. As
you know, my bad script is famous. , . .

But now times are hard. There exists in my hands your inti-
mate correspondence with the Liberator, and I am going to make
full use of it. Much effort did it cost me to save these papers in
the year 1830 and these papers remain my property very
much mine. . . * You know my rules of conduct. You know the
rules by which I govern my life, and this is the way I shall go
until I leave for the grave. Time will justify me.

No one writes me now. And you see me alone on this island,
abandoned by my family. I always remember with pleasure our
old friendship, and in its name I beg that you aid me. . . .

There was a more than implied threat in this letter, and Flores
knew precisely what she was intimating. She had his damaging
correspondence with Bolivar. Manuela's was a pleading letter,
but at the same time she was leveling a loaded gun at the man
who, by force, had gained control of Ecuador. Even then her
brother, General Jose Maria Saenz, was his enemy. He opposed
the secession of Ecuador from the union of Gran Colombia, raised
the standard of revolt, and became an open, avowed opponent of
General Flores. Even as Manuela was writing her letter, her
brother was being executed before a firing squad.

A letter of invitation to return to her native land, a passport, and
a safe-conduct signed by General Flores, were sent to her in

The Gray Cliffs of Paita 283

Jamaica; and weary of her Homeric travels, Manuela appeared
once again, in October 1835, at the tropical port of Guayaquil.
How many times she had made that trip from the humid seacoast
to the Andes, and under so many varying conditions! It seemed
that every important episode of her life involved these same moun-
tain trails. Here, over this footworn path, she had come at the age
of seventeen, escorted by monks, when she was expelled from
the Convent of Santa Catalina. Here she had come in state in 1822,
to return to Quito and to meet Bolivar. Here in 1827 she had
walked up, after her exile from Lima. And now once more the trail.
There were familiar wayposts.

So she reached the mountain-bound village of Guaranda, under
the shadows of a snow-encrusted glacier, but she got no farther.
On the night of October 9 she remembered the date well
there was a fearful pounding at the door of the house where she
was staying, a knocking loud enough to awaken the night watch
and raise all the dogs. In the glare of torches, soldiers with fixed
bayonets stood by the door. A gentleman in a heavy Spanish cloak
and a wide-brimmed Panama presented himself:

"Antonio Robelli, at your service. ... I am ordered by the
central government to arrest your journey to Quito. And I am
further ordered to force your return to the point whence you
came. By virtue of this order you will be pleased to return at
once to Guayaquil . . ?

And with that the official decree of her exile. In the interval
of her journey from Jamaica, Mores had been deposed, and the
new president would have none of Manuela:

To SENOBA MANUELA SAENZ:

The President understands that the Senora has returned from
Jamaica to Guayaquil and is taking the road for cities of the
interior. He also understands that she is spreading seditious talk
in favor of her late brother General Saenz, who died in 1834 fight-
ing against this Government. I am disturbed about the effect on
public tranquillity therefore you are ordered to return to Guaya-
quil and leave this country as soon as possible.

284 The Four Seasons of Manuela

Manuela was held under house arrest, and she was making her
last stand. With fury she flung about, but once again, as in the
dungeons of Cartagena, she could only listen to the echoes of her
frenzy. The soldiers gave the small woman wide berth as she
walked up and down the mud floor, striking her boots with a
silver-headed riding crop. She made a last attempt to resist,
writing her old friend General Flores:

Guaranda, October 10, 1835

Yesterday I left for Cusuiche and today, following the orders
of the government, I must return to the coast. You know, from a
copy of the orders for my exile that accompanies this letter, that
the orders must have been dictated by a drunk and written by an
imbecile. What reason is there for this canard, based on the argu-
ment of my former political activities? Sir, because of my
brothers I have suffered much. But enough . . . When arrested
I gave them the passport which you had the kindness to give me,
which was an expression of my innocence. Sir, I do not counter-
march except with the use of force.

Nothing will convince me. My resolution is formed. Only if you
command me , . . then I will obey, but with great anguish. I
shall be docile toward you, and toward you alone. Now I bid you
good-by.

The eternal recurrence of the sun, of gray dust, of a nirvanalike
monotony, had brought to Manuela, in Payta-town, tranquillity.
This metamorphosis was, like all fundamental variations in char-
acter, a slow, an almost imperceptible change. Poverty attended
her, and she met it with a restrained courage. Many of her things
were still in Bogota, she had sold the last of her jewels and her
clothes they would not be needed in Payta-town and with
what she had left she rented for a pittance the leaning wickerwork
house, and there opened a small store. Of all her retinue of slaves
and servants, only three elected exile with her. Jonotas, the irre-
pressible Jonotas, was swallowed up by the dark stream of life,
as was Natan. One by one the other slaves were sold, regained
their freedom, left, died. There now remained only Juana Rosa,
who had a capacious heart and an almost motherly regard for her

The Gray Cliffs of Paita 285

mistress, and two dark-skinned waifs, Dominga and Mendoza,
criadas whom the full heart of Manuela could not leave behind in
Colombia.

News and rumors filtered in, but under the gray dust of the en-
vironment Manuela's reactions were detached. She, who before
never could distinguish between a personality and an argument,
now took the events of life as if they were a cruel malady through
which one had to pass. In 1837 she learned that her old friend,
de Lacroix, he who had sent the fateful letter about Simon
Bolivar's death, was gone. Exiled and penniless, he had sunk into
poverty and disgrace, and finally blew out his brains in a Parisian
garret. Next, Pepe Paris. An injured arm . . . gangrene . . .
amputation . . . then lovable Pepe was gathered into Mother
Earth.

Through it all Manuela kept up her interminable crocheting,
and sold her coarse black cigars.

Word drifted up from Lima, too, from her former friend and
chronicler, Cayetano Freyre. Back in the graces of the govern-
ment, he was now an advocate; he knew all the latest gossip in and
about Lima. Some of it concerned Manuela's husband she was
after all still legally married to James Thome. Don Jaime had first
become executor of the estate of his late friend, General Domingo
Orue; soon he somehow got control of the great sugar hacienda;
now he was extremely wealthy. He was very close to the General's
widow; and the children whom Senora Orue now had about her
were definitely Don Jaime's. Now if Manuela since she did
after all have a legal position . . . No! Manuela had no interest
in her husband's affairs.

She was done with all that.

After 1837, Manuela needed no longer to write in her letters,
"Nothing ever happens in this miserable port"; for the half -moon
bay was filled much of the time with whaling ships from New
Bedford. Paita was the last port of call before these vessels,
following the path of the whale, made their way into the limitless
Pacific seas. Water brought on mule back from the inland moun-

286 The Four Seasons of Manuela

tains, some fresh vegetables, an occasional steer, and tobacco were
to be had in Paita; and all the whalemen stopped here. There
were, naturally, desertions, brawls, heavy drinking; the Payta-
town jail was enlarged, still it could not contain the avalanche.
All this, plus the shipowners' protests to the government in Wash-
ington about the exorbitant costs of victualing ships at Paita,
brought an official representative of the United States. On July 1,
1839, Alexander Ruden, Jr. of Cincinnati, brushing the gray dust
off his tall beaver hat, moved into a small termite-infested build-
ing and hung out his sign American Consul.

Alexander Ruden the townspeople called him Don Alejandro
had entered the South American scene early, coming down by
sea to Chile, and moving north in search of something worthy of
his labors. He learned some Spanish, and acquired a working
knowledge of the abracadabra of ships and whale oil. Then at the
age of twenty-nine he was named American Consul at Paita; he
was to remain there for sixteen years, until the whaling industry
began to fail He was, as consuls go, fairly diligent, even though
there was an undated complaint, sent to the President of the
United States by the master of an American whaler, stating that
"Mr. Ruden is so deeply engaged in commercial transactions that
he does not attend to the business of the Consulate." Paita, for
him, was made less difficult because of the presence of Manuela
Saenz. They spoke English together, she helped him with the local
authorities, and did translations when the Spanish was beyond
him. Ruden in turn was able to ease her poverty.

She was invaluable when he had trouble over the Acushnet, a
358-ton whaler out of New Bedford. It dropped anchor in Paita
in the middle of November, 1841, and even before the sails were
reefed most of the twenty-six-man crew were storming ashore
seeking out the consul It was the ship's master a hard-bitten
martinet who treated them as criminals. To all complaints and
remonstrances, to mutterings of revolt, he replied with the mar-
linespike, convincingly administered.

It was an acrimonious three days; there were fights in the streets

The Gray Cliffs of Paita 287

winch the night watch had difficulty in silencing. The second mate
deserted, and the captain roared in to demand legal protection for
the ship's articles. Manuela Saenz, with experience in jails and
failings, was called in to aid in the preparation of legal documents
for the local authorities. In the flickering of a burning candle,
with winged termites flying in erratic circles about the flame, her
scratching quill teased the salty English of the Acushnefs sailors
into Spanish.

One of the last to give testimony was a quiet, gray-eyed young
man of twenty-two. His name, when he aflked it to the document,
meant no more to Manuela than it did to his shipmates: Herman
Melville. But later, much later, when fame attended him, then
deserted him, he remembered Manuela. "Humanity, thou strong
thing, I worship thee not in the laurelled victor but in the van-
quished one." And he thought of the opaque grayness of Paita,
and Manuela mounted on the hindquarters of a burro: **. . . She
was passing into Payta town riding upon a small gray ass, and
"before her on the ass's shoulders she eyed the jointed workings of
the beast's armorial cross . . "

"If time could only stand still . . /* Manuela had said that once,
when in a burst of emotion she wanted to hold onto one delicious
moment. "If time could only stand still." Yet time did stand still
in Paita. Or was it that the dreadful monotony of the place pre-
empted time? Manuela was made aware of it only when the news,
belated as it was, came from the outside* One by one her friends
and her enemies were carried off. General Rafael Urdaneta, main-
taining his conventions to the end, expired with the grace of a
gentleman, apologizing to the Archbishop who attended his soul
for dying in his presence. "Pray do! Do!" said the prince of the
Church, with a wave of his jeweled left hand. Santander of the
scrivener's soul had long since departed; he was immortalized in
ManuelaTs memory only by his name, which she gave to one of
her cats. In 1846 it became the turn of General La Mar, he who
had fought at the Battle of Ayacucho, the kst of the famous gen-

288 The Four Seasons of Manuela

erals who were in exile. What remained of La Mar touched briefly
at Paita, and Manuela reported on it: "There is a war vessel here
bringing back the remains of General La Mar which Senor Otoya
has brought from Costa Rica."

The passing years assaulted Manuela in vain; she seemed age-
less, like ageless Paita. Her lithe and sinuous body, made hard and
firm from her active life, kept time's frontal attacks at arm's
length. Her skin still retained its alabaster white, the flesh re-
mained firm, and the eyes dark and lustrous. Only here and there,
in the obsidian blackness of her hair, a wisp of gray appeared. But
it was the gray winter of poverty that assailed her most. She was
barely able to keep her establishment together. She could come
to no terms with the government in Bogota to release her things,
and with Quito it was even worse. The part of her mothe/s estate
for which she had fought so tenaciously was in a legal tangle.
Even with her good friends there, she could not extricate the
money that should have come to her, and did not come. Lima had
nothing for her. For, although she was entitled to a pension
as one who held the Order of the Sun, her name was still
anathema to the government. Still she had not yielded to time,
she sold her cloves of garlic, measured out her grains of rice,
dispensed tobacco and cigars, became the counselor of young
and old in Payta-town somehow retaining her eternal youthful-
ness.

When disaster came, it welled up from an unexpected and
almost trivial source. She had braved the horrors of jungles and
of Andes; she had lived through war and revolution for more than
half of her life; she had survived dungeons and exile. None of these
had left a physical mark upon her. Her life was approaching a half
century when, coming down the tilted stairs of her infested house,
a termite-eaten step gave way, and she was flung down the entire
length of the stairway. In agony she was carried upstairs until a
doctor, secured with difficulty from Piura, miles away, could
attend her. The active days of Manuela were over. She had dis-

The Gray Cliffs of Paita 289

located her hip. She would never ride or walk again. She would
be forever confined to her hammock.

The pain of her fall was still upon her when other news came*
In the middle of a letter to a friend she suddenly could write
no more:

August 11, 1847

... I write no more. I am very upset with the notice, which
has just come to me, of the horrible assassination of my husband;
while it is true that I did not live with Mm, I cannot take indif-
ferently his lamentable demise . . .

It was true. On June 19, 1847, a masked gang surprised the aged
James Thome walking with his mistress, fell upon them, and
horribly mutilated the bodies. No one knew who killed the English-
man and Ventura Concha, or why. It may have been jealousy, for
he had lived for some years with General Orue's widow, from
whom he had acquired vast lands. Or it might have been assassins
hired to avenge his assumption of the holdings, which more im-
mediate relatives regarded as their own. It remains a mystery. All
that was known was that James Thome was dead, and that he
had left a huge estate. Cayetano Freyre was alerted at once on
behalf of Manuela. He waited until the testament was filed, ob-
tained a copy of it. Thome, certainly a man of probity, had indeed
mentioned Manuela. He had left her precisely the eight thousand
pesos which her father had given him as her dowry, plus the
accrued interest of the years. And that was all.

Still, such a sum of money would have been manna to Manuela.
She was now destitute, crippled by her fall, and confined perpetu-
ally to a hammock from which she could not walk unless assisted
by two others. The money would have given her something to
ease the pain of living. But she had not counted upon the
malevolence of her enemies. The executor of her husband's estate
was Captain Manuel Escobar, in whom in the past she had im-
planted an implacable hatred. Through Cayetano Freyre, she
asked for her eight thousand pesos and was given legal denial.
The matter was pressed. Everyone in Paita who knew of Mamiela's

290 The Four Seasons of Manuela

extreme poverty signed documents attesting to her need. But
these, presented to the court in Lima, only seemed to arouse
greater opposition. Her enemies raked over the dry dead leaves of
her past. "All the world knows that Manuela Saenz was a public
woman, that her defects in this regard are so patent, so well known,
that they cannot be denied . . ." Thus spoke the legal papers in
interminable delay, while she was slowly engulfed by penury.
Manuela Saenz had suddenly grown old.

18

"TIME WILL
JUSTIFY ME"

IT CAME AS A SOLACE to her poverty, softening tihe harsh winter
winds of her soul; it came as a symbol of the plenitude of her life,
and a vindication of all she had lived and said. It came in a way
not at all strange in a world guided by no natural law, only natural
consequences a world where the ironical twist is so often the
summation of things. Simon Bolivar found his glory.

A decade had ground slowly past since he was buried in the
Cathedral at Santa Marta, with a borrowed nightshirt for a shroud.
No honors were allowed him, and the Governor of Maracaibo
seemed to speak for all when he thundered out his anathema, "The
spirit of evil, the author of all our misfortunes, the oppressor
of the nation, is dead/* And the name of Simon Bolivar was ordered
expunged from human memory. There were only a few friends left
who openly espoused his past glory, only a few who, like Manuela,
dared to defy the authorities. Manuela, and only Manuela, whose
love for him was a faith, had the courage to protest against the
public degradation of so great a man:

He will never die. . . . Everyone would choose the Liberator
as his saint. Even I, if I were to be so remiss as to survive him,
even I would make him my saint.

Now from the pathos of distance she watched the transfigura-
tion of her Simon, saw his deification from afar. For twelve years
following his death, his sisters in Caracas begged that they be

292 The Four Seasons of Manuela

allowed to bring the Liberator's body to his boyhood home; it was
denied. In 1842 the government relented; the request was granted.
And overnight, in all the lands that had known him, the people
spontaneously gave vent to an orgy of sentiment. His funeral was
an international event. Warships from many lands boomed him a
salute as his remains were placed aboard a man-of-war to be
brought back to his native land. The streets of Caracas witnessed
the most impressive cortege in their history. Those who had
calumniated him in life now honored him in death, carrying his
catafalque on their own shoulders along the cobblestone pave-
ments.

Then, the idealization. Those who wrote him encomiums forgot
that only a short time before he had been a living man, and, like a
vast landscape of varying climes, a man of immense contradic-
tions. Now everything about his life became romanticized,
idealized; the force of mythogenesis was already at work. All over
the Bolivarian lands the process of sanctification was developing.
In the great plaza at Bogota, where in 1830 Manuela had torn
down a hideous caricature of the Liberator, the Colombians
erected a monument to him by the famous Italian sculptor
Tenerani. Memorials to him mushroomed in all the lands that had
once been the crucible of his defeats and his glory.

At first a bittersweet emotion swept over Manuela's heart,
when she heard how Bolivar was being raised to the position
which she always knew would one day be his. Even as the news of
each event seeped into Paita, she became aware of what Simon
Bolivar's transfiguration would mean to her. She had become,
to the idealizers, the great blot on his life; she was being im-
molated, sacrificed to the muse of distorted history. They did not
know how to treat that amazing love affair, and being unable to
understand it or to know its force, they found it easier to pass
over those eight years altogether. ("The scandalous history of
this woman is well known, as is her arrogant character, unquiet
and daring.") She stained the memory of this great man. So
Manuela had to go.

"Time Will Justify Me" 293

As Bolivar's star rose, Manuela's fell away; and in the course
of the years she was blotted from the record of his life, passed over
in studied silence. She who had sustained him through his years
of travail, she who had saved his life, she who had loved him with
a complete surrender of soul and body, without reservations,
without conditions, she whose love for him had become a faith,
who had fought to preserve his memory and had been exiled for
her persistence she, this Manuela, had to go, go to satisfy the
distorted portrait which the apologists were painting of the
Liberator.

There was, however, one old friend who would not subscribe to
this campaign of silence. He knew what Manuela had meant to
Simon Bolivar, and he for one had no intention of expunging her
from his life story. It was General Daniel O'Leary. In the year 1847
he was back in Bogota, as Consul General of Great Britain, and
was in the process of preparing the life of Simon Bolivar through
his public letters. This was to be the literary font of his glory; and
as Manuela had many documents which were not in O'Leary's
own collections, he sought her out in Paita. She wrote for his
memoirs her personal recollections of what had happened on
that stirring night of the 25th of September. And then, in
response to O'Leary's plea, she revealed to him the hiding places
of her papers in Bogota, and allowed him to examine the
coffer that contained all those letters of the eight years of their
love:

In respect to your inquiry for an autograph of Bolivar [O'Leary
wrote to a friend], which I now send you, you have undoubtedly
heard me speak of Dona Manuela Saenz, the extravagant dear
friend of General Bolivar. In the last few days there was deliv-
ered into my hands in Bogota a leather-bound coffer containing
many hundreds of letters sent to her by her illustrious lover, and
many in his own hand. I had but a short time to go through them
quickly. As revealed in his letters there never was a more ardent
lover, nor one more passionate and yet there shines through
these letters a profound attachment for her, and a disturbance,
too, over their illicit relationship . , .

294 The Four Seasons of Manuela

Then, having taken from the coffer what was needed, O'Leary
sent all the letters by special courier to Manuela Saenz in Paita.

Now after all these years she had her letters. And this is the
way she was found, half sitting, half lying in her hammock, when
an old friend crawled painfully up the termite-bound stairway.
"Does the Liberatress live here?"
And from the interior came a commanding voice:
"Enter. Who wishes to speak with the Liberatress?"
In shuffled Simon Rodriguez. In the eventide of life he had
found his way to be with Manuela. He was now eighty; he had the
same pink cheeks, snow-white hair haloed his face. Only his clothes
told of the thousand little hells that had been his life. When his
illustrious pupil had died, he had published at his own expense a
Defense of Simon Bolivar, in which like Manuela he vehemently
defended the public life of the Liberator. After which, Rodriguez
was pointedly asked to leave Peru. He moved on to Quito, where
the government engaged him to teach his new educational system;
but they forgot to pay him his twenty pesos a month. Then he
went north to Ibarra to start a candle factory, but, waxing more
enthusiastic over the ladies than over the candles, he lost the plant
to his creditors. He then thought of a plan to colonize the upper
Amazon; but fortunately for him, the grandiose scheme evaporated
before he could place his brittle-boned aging body on a mule.
Finally at Latacunga he began a powder factory, since this was a
commodity all could use; but he had hardly turned out his first
contract than one night the place blew up. That marked the active
end of his fabulous passage through the world; he would have no
more of it. So on an outsized mule he packed the few things he
had salvaged from his extravagant life, and left for Paita. He found
a small hovel close by in the desert village of Amotaje. There he
earned his food by writing letters; and when he could, he mounted
a mule and rode over to see Manuela.

"Time Witt Justify Me* 295

A matriarchal dignity settled over Manuela. The lest gathered
on her body, her hair was streaked with gray; yet her face, despite
age and poverty, kept its youthfulness. When she could be moved,
she sat "in a rocking chair like a queen on a throne." She accepted
the gifts of the townspeople with proud dignity, for on them alone
she lived; she existed on the pity of the people of Paita, that pity
which is the most pleasant of feelings to those who have not much
pride or any prospects of great conquest. But she did not allow
herself to be overwhelmed by this pity. Her speech remained
facile, correct, devoid of pretense, and dominated by an irony
which went over the heads of her simple-minded benefactors. It
was old gray December, and Simon Rodriguez shared it. Together
these two who had loved Simon Bolivar spent their winter years,
together reading those letters which told of other days.

Thus they were one day in 1851, when a gentleman mounted
the angled stairway and asked for the Liberatress.

"Enter, who wishes to speak to the Liberatress. "

He was a distinguished-looking man, with small blue eyes, a
long nose, sunlit hair and a tawny full beard. He spoke Spanish
well, as he introduced himself, but with the precise accents of a
foreigner. His name was Giuseppe Garibaldi, Fever raged within
him, and Manuela had a large leather-upholstered couch cleared
of letters and insisted that he lie down. His name was not com-
pletely strange to her. She knew that he had fought for liberty
in Uruguay, then headed the Italian Legion before Rome until,
being overwhelmed, he sought exile first in Tangier, then in
Liverpool, and finally "although no one wanted me" in Staten
Island, where he made candles. He was now bound for Chile, but
suffered from fever contracted in Panama. When the ship dropped
anchor at Paita, he learned that Manuela was there, and he wanted
to hear from her own lips the intimate details of Bolivar's life.
Garibaldi, in his later greatness, remembered the day:

We landed at Paita and spent the day. I was graciously received
in the house of a benevolent lady who had been confined to her
bed by a paralytic stroke, which deprived her of the use of her

296 The Four Seasons of Manuela

limbs I passed the greater part of the day on a sofa beside the
lady's couch. . . .

Donna Manuelita de Saenz was the most graceful and cour-
teous matron I have ever seen. Having enjoyed the friendship of
Bolivar, she was acquainted with the most minute details of the
great Liberator. . . .

After that day, spent with Manuelita, which by contrast with
so many others passed in pain and weakness I may well call de-
licious because spent in the interesting society of this invalid
I parted from her deeply touched. Both of us had tears in our
eyes knowing no doubt that it was to us both our last farewell
on this earth.

The year 1854 was a bad one for Manuela. She had kept up a
correspondence with General O'Leary, filling her days with
writing to him of the remembrances of the past, adding her own
accounts of those eventful years. And that Irishman who venerated
Bolivar had finished his memoirs, in twenty-nine volumes: twelve,
lie explained to Manuela, were to be of Bolivars correspondence,
fourteen of documents, two of narration; while the final volume,
the appendix, would be one in which she would appear. But when
the officials of Venezuela, who were to print the whole of it, found
those passages on Manuela detailing her love for the Liberator,
they gave one horrified look and suppressed it. In Bogota a large
folio of papers, entitled Correspondence and Documents Relating
to Senora Manuela Saenz, Which Demonstrate the Esteem in
Which She Was Held by Various People of Importance, mysteri-
ously disappeared from the shelves of the national archives. The
elimination of Manuela from the life of the man she loved was
almost complete.

But she was now beyond the reach of malice. She sat in her airy
house, confined eternally to bed or chair, gazing for hours on the
sea, the variegated, tender, tremulous skin of the Pacific. She was
utterly at peace with herself and the world that had been hers.
Yet 1854 was a bad year for her. General O'Leary died. Then
Simon Rodriguez. She had missed his weekly visits, for he was

"Time Will Justify Me" 297

now in the flood tide of misery and want, and was too weak to
mount his burro. In a small dark room he was quietly expiring.
Word came to Manuela of this, but she could not leave her room;
all she could do was to commend his epicurean soul to the gods.
And at last, with the village priest as his only attendant in death,
Simon Rodriguez finished his life in classical style, in the language
of his spiritual forefathers. Quoting Gomoedia finita est, he de-
parted, leaving Manuela to face the final scene of the human
comedy alone.

It was not long in coming. In the middle of November 1856, a
sailor was brought ashore in a fever. The local authorities tried
to stem the course of the disease, but the ailment was beyond their
knowledge; the sailor died gasping for air, strangling on his own
phlegm. And before he was even buried two townspeople de-
veloped the same disease, burned with fever, and strangled to
death. Within days it was epidemic, felling person after person;
there was not an hour in which some silent funeral cortege did not
shuffle down the street, raising a thick cloud of gray dust. All those
who could fled the bobbio, the diphtheria; the ships refused them
for fear of contagion, so they left by foot, by mule, by cart, over
the desert to the towns that lay in the interior. By the end of
November the plague was out of control. There was no longer
time for individual burials. The masked committee of removal
merely came to the houses, loaded the dead on a cart, and pulled
them all to a common grave. Behind the committee came an
elderly wrinkled man, so dried out as to harbor no micro-organ-
isms, who acted as the sanitary corps of San Francisco de Paita.
He gathered the effects of the plague victims, tossed them into the
street, and burned them.

Manuela was doomed. She told this to her old friend General
Antonio de la Guerrera, who had been caught in plague-bound
Paita. She could not flee. She could take no precautions; for what
precautions could one take when the whole air was filled with the
miasma of the disease? Two of her servants died, and were pulled

298 The Four Seasons of Manuela

away in the death cart. Then her old slave-companion Juana Rosa
succumbed, and the General, acting for Manuela, personally
buried the ancient retainer.
Four days later, Manuek died.

Paita, December 5, 1856
MY DABLING PEPA,

On the 23rd of the past month in November at six in the
afternoon, our old friend Dona Manuela Saenz ceased to exist
Three days before, we buried her old Negro servant Juana Rosa;
they both died from that infernal illness of the throat, the bobbio.

Thus Antonio de la Guerrera to his wife. He had tried, when the
deathwatch came along, to prevent them from treating Manuela
as they did the others. But death knows no favorites; they carried
her down the termite-infested stairway in her hammock and put
her in the open two-wheeled death cart. Outside the town the sur-
vivors had hollowed a communal pit, under the gray cliffs of Paita;
and into it all that was left of Manuela Saenz was lowered to the
anonymity of death.

When the old General returned from the mass funeral, he was
horrified to find that the deathwatch had performed his duties
well, all too well. As soon as Manuela's body had been removed,
the desiccated old man had climbed the stairs and thrown out all
of her personal possessions. In front of her leaning house on the
dusty street he heaped clothes, pictures, medals, mementos of
the battles and the peace; and, on top of all, the brown-leather
coffer that held the hundreds of letters from her lover. Then he
burned them. The destruction was complete. But, as the General
sadly pushed his toe among the ashes of a love which had once
stirred all South America, he found a single charred sheet whose
message could still be read:

The memory of your enchantments dissolves the frost of my
years , . . your love revives a life that is expiring. I cannot live
without you. I can see you always even though I am far away
from you. Come. Come to me. Come now.

CHR ONOL O GT

1783 Simon Bolivar born in Caracas, Venezuela

1789 French Revolution

1792 France a republic

1793 Reign of Terror

1797 Manuela Saenz bom in Quito, Ecuador

1799 Death of Washington

Coup d'etat of 18 Brumaire: Napoleon First Consul

1800 Revolutionary outbreaks in Venezuela

1801 Bolivar goes to Spain

1802 Bolivar marries Maria Teresa de Toro; she dies eight

months later

1803 Louisiana Purchase

1808 Napoleon wars with Spain; Ferdinand VII deposed, Joseph

Bonaparte crowned King of Spain; unrest in colonies

1809 James Madison President
Revolt in Quito, "Men of August"

1811-1814 Bolivar fighting in Venezuela

1814 Napoleon exiled to Elba

1815 Battle of New Orleans
Bolivar in exile in Jamaica
Battle of Waterloo

Ferdinand VII returned to Spanish throne
Manuela Sdenz expelled from Convent of Santa Catalina;
goes to Panama

1817 Manuela S&enz married in Lima to James Thome

1819 Battle of Boyaca

Republic of Gran Colombia created

300 Chronology

1821 Lima falls to patriot troops of General Jose de San Martin

1822 Manuela Saenz decorated with the Order of the Sun
Battle of Pichincha for Quito

Manuela Saenz becomes mistress of Sim6n Bolivar

1823 Bolivar enters Lima

1824 Battle of Ayacucho
Death of Lord Byron

1827 Revolt in Lima. Manuela Saenz exiled; joins Bolivar in

Bogota

1828 Manuela saves Bolivar from assassination

1830 Bolivar exiled from Colombia, dies
July Revolution in France

1834 Manuela Saenz exiled to Jamaica

1835 Manuela Saenz living in Paita, Peru

1841 William H. Harrison President

Herman Melville sees Manuela Saenz in Paita

1846-1848 United States at war with Mexico

1847 James Thome murdered

1848 Revolution throughout Europe

1851 Garibaldi visits Manuela Saenz in Paita
1854-1856 Crimean War

1856 Death of Manuela Saenz

BIBLIO GRAPHT

In which the author tells how Manuela came to be
The life of Manuela no matter how much it may at times read like
some baroque romance is biography, biography in the Stracheyan
sense. Nothing here is inserted not a word, not a quotation, not a
date, not a conversation that exhaustive research has not fully war-
ranted. The book has purposely been written without footnotes; the
precise detailed proof exists in the author's files, and published sepa-
rately but simultaneously with this biography of Manuela is a volume
in Spanish entitled "Documentary History of Manuela Saenz/* Those
who wish to examine sources will find all the documents detailed in a
special issue of the Bulletin of the Colombian Academy of History at
Bogota. So rich, so varied is this newly discovered material on the life
of Manuela, and therefore of Sim6n Bolivar, that no biography can
again be written on the Liberator without using it; it dispels the
legends without making new ones; it shows a Bolivar shorn of the
chiton of an immortal and makes of him, as he was, a passionate human
being striving after an ideal, a man of complex attitudes and, like a vast
country, of vast climates and vast contradictions. Fully to appreciate
what we know now of this "lovable fool" of Bolivar's one need turn
only to the inadequacies of past biographies of Simon Bolivar, which
too often repeat all the idiocies and the legends about Manuela her
"faithful husband Dr. Thome" begging her to return; she declining;
he sending money which she refuses; "the doctor" dying in 1840 and
willing her most of his fortunes; she again refusing. Manuela without
myth is thus: Thome was not a doctor, but a shipping merchant. After
1827 he lost touch with Manuela. He did not die in Lima in 1840 but
was murdered in 1847 in Pativilca while walking with one of his mis-
tresses. He had two mistresses, and sired four illegitimate children, all
of whom he mentions in his will. He willed Manuela no more than the

302 Bibliography

8000 pesos which had been her dowry, and though she never recovered
it, she instituted suit for it

How then did all the early records escape biographers? Why in this
century following Bolivar's death had not someone found them? The
answer and it is an answer Hes in the personality of Manuela.
When Simon Bolivar was metamorphosed into a demigod by the very
people who ten years before had execrated him, Manuela Saenz, it
was willed by the historians, had to go to make way for the myth. All
details of her life were officially suppressed, documents which men-
tioned her disappeared, and her own last twenty years were lived in
obscurity in Paita. And then, to complete the immolation, almost all
the stirring love letters she exchanged with Bolivar were destroyed
after her death during the diphtheria epidemic. For more than half a
century the historians kept their gentleman's agreement Manuela
was never mentioned. Yet the force of her extravagant personality kept
her memory vivid and it lingered and still does at every point in
South America where she set foot. Then in 1897 the agreement was
abrogated by the publication of the memoirs of the French scientist,
Jean-Baptiste Boussingault. Here was a man who had actually known
Manuela, knew her and the runes of her fame; and he had been no
ordinary traveler. He was one of a French mission who came to Colom-
bia in 1822 and he remained there for ten years. He had carried a letter
of introduction from Humboldt to Bolivar. He was a great scientist,
a renowned author, a professor at the Sorbonne, a member of the
French Academy of Sciences and yet more: he had no historical ax
to grind. Manuela Saenz now could no longer be ignored.

But by this time the trail had grown cold. Almost all the revealing
letters which Manuela must have exchanged with her lover had been
destroyed at her death; the volume of the Memorias of General O'Leary
which spoke of the love affair between Manuela and Simon Bolivar
was suppressed; and the volume marked "56," the Correspondence and
Documents Relating to Senora Manuela Saenz, Which Demonstrated
the Esteem in Which Various People of Note Held Her and the Part
She Played in Political Affairs, disappeared from the archives in Bogotd.
There remained only legends, traditions and attitudes to draw upon to
sketch the portrait of the woman Sim6n Bolivar loved. Who or what
was this disquieting woman who aroused a storm of protest wherever
she went? Every biography of Bolivar fictionalized her, drawing her

Bibliography 303

vignette in distorted lines, pyramiding myth upon myth until the real
Manuela was left without reality. There were articles about "the true
Manuela," she appeared in the Secret Life of Simon Bolivar, she was re-
called in The Loves of Bolivar, but all this was based on extraneous
legendary material; Manuela Saenz had escaped history. Yet the leg-
ends of this strange and disturbing woman would not be quieted;
scholars looking in the vast reservoirs of never-consulted documents
began to unearth fragments, authentic fragments, of Manuela's ex-
istence,

My active interest in this strange and delectable life began in 1944;
then the actual factual material gleaned from her known letters
would not have covered two sheets of foolscap. Through the years
when I was engaged in writing other books on Latin America, I read
the whole of the literature on Bolivar and his times, and through an
elaborate system of notes managed to get the feeling of the milieu in
which La Saenz lived. By 1947 the actual search for Manuela had be-
gunthe libraries of Bogota, public and private, were scoured for
material, the archives were subjected to minute searching, every
place where Manuela had lived was visited, her travels were dupli-
cated as she took them, by mule and horse. In Ecuador, where
previous long residence had given me a thorough knowledge of the
country, I found numerous unknown documents, pertaining to Man-
uela, buried in the uncatalogued registers of the public archives; and
here again Manuela's extravagant Me was relived. But it was in Lima
that the puzzlements of Manuela's marriage were made clear; the secret
archives of the Archbishop of Lima yielded her banns, and the details
of her marriage to James Thome. Here in the archives the mysterious
James Thome, the much maligned cuckold of the triangle which be-
came a chronique scandaleuse> took on at last flesh and blood as one
of the principals in this drama.

Then, the National Archives of Peru these became the font and
source of the goings and comings of Manuela Sdenz. And for simple
reasons. Under the colonial system of Spain, every commercial act,
the buying and selling of a slave, the purchase of a carriage, the act
of departure, all had to be set down by a public scrivener on papel
sellado. These stamped papers (which furnished a good revenue to
the Crown) were a progress sheet of one's commercial transactions.
They began in this fashion: "I, Manuela Sdenz, who attest to the truth

304 Bibliography

of the following by making the sign of the cross, declare that I am
twenty-four years of age, married to Don James Thome and reside at
La Magdalena, outside of the walls of Lima, depose . . . and say
. . r and then followed the transaction. The original document was
always given to the petitioner (in the case of Manuela they were de-
stroyed) but the copy was kept by the scrivener, who, in time, bound
all his notarial papers together and eventually deposited them to swell
the many millions of documents (dating from 1539) which form the
collections of the National Archives of Peru. There is no index and
the only way to make one's way through this labyrinth of paper, foxed
and yellowed, is to select the years of Manuela's known residence in
Lima and subject the whole of those numberless volumes to a page-
by-page search. This was done over a period of a year and the
result was an almost month-by-month knowledge of what Manuela
was doing in the environs of Lima.

The trail of Manuela was followed everywhere over the hard rock-
land of the Andes to the lake of Junin, where a battle was fought
above the clouds, and then to Ayacucho, and to Trujillo, once walled
like Lima, where Manuela watched General Bolivar build the army
that would defeat the Spanish legions, and on to the desert-bound sea-
port of Paita to search for the nothingness that became Manuela
there and then on to the town of Piura, where for many hot days I
stood knee-deep in moldering notarial records, trying to unearth some
biographical fact from those dusty pages. So it went on. Every nook
and cranny of history was searched out, everything that could yield
a detail to give this biography the romance of reality was sought
almanacs for the condition of climate, museums for precise descrip-
tions of dress, houses for the study of interiors, letters in private col-
lections for the breath of scandal; and through that preparation the
whole life of Manuela was re-created. Nothing here, then, is inserted
which research cannot prove. For beyond the presence of dates and of
history, Manuela's story is a timeless story, and the most fertile of
novelists would have been hard put to find a plot that would tell her
life better than by following what actually occurred. One could
change the names of the dramatis personae, rearrange the battles, or
replace the locale of South America at the time of its revolution; one
could even give it a different milieu, adding glint and glitter at the

Bibliography 305

expense o reality. It would change nothing. The story is the thing,
and this is Manuela's story.

Acknowledgments

This biography of Manuela Saenz was first initiated and much of the
research, under my direction, was done by my former wife, now
Christine Powell; under this "talking out" the pattern of Manuela's
personality took form and was further fleshed by the revealing re-
search. All of the research material, in the form of documents, letters
and books, came out of South America over a period of ten years. In
Venezuela, Dr. Vicente Lecuna, the eminent editor of the collected
letters of Simon Bolivar, gave over a period of years much aid. In
Bogota, which a century ago had been Bolivar's capital of Gran
Colombia, there came consistent help from Dr. Luis Augusto Cuervo,
who allowed his collections to be photographed; great aid came from
Dr. Enrique Ortega Ricaurte, Director of the National Archives; and
editorial assistance from Dr. Enrique Otero D'Costa, and from J. R. de
la Torre Bueno, affectionately "Bill."

In Quito "under the equatorial line," where Manuela was born and
where time has given her a saintly nimbus, I had the assistance of
General Angel Issac Chiriboga, whose family a century ago was inti-
mate with La Saenz; from the library of the late Senor Don Jacinto
Jijon y Caamano, the correspondence of his ancestor, General Flores,
with Manuela; and from Dr. Enrique Arroyo, former Undersecretary
of Foreign Affairs, much help and direction. In Lima, where Manuela
made her history and her scandal, the historical letter telling of Man-
uela's death came from the collections of Senor Don Aurelio Miro
Quesada, Director of El Comercio. Senor Don Francisco Moreira y
Paz Soldan opened up his private library, in which the records of his
ancestors, the Counts of San Isidro, provided the finest of colonial
material. But it was in the National Archives of Peru in Lima that
the richest material was discovered. My good genie, in the person
of Senor Don Felipe Marquez, searched through countless thousands
of documents to find the details of Manuela's life. These archives con-
tain one of the richest collections of manuscripts pertaining to the
private life of Sim6n Bolivar that has been found within the century.

306 Bibliography

Bibliographical Note

The listings that follow are not intended to be a formal bibliography,
which can be found in the author's detailed study, "The Documentary
History of Manuela Saenz" (Boletin de Historia y Antiguedades,
Academia Colombiana de Historia, Bogota, February 1952). The books
and articles are placed, as in any dramatis personae, in order of their
appearance:

1827 Manuel de Vidaurre, Suplemento a las cartas arnericanas, etc.:
Correspondenda con los generates Bolivar, Santander y La
Mar. Lima, 1827.

(Manuel de Vidaurre [1773-1841] was Minister of Foreign
Affairs in 1827, during the time that Manuela Saenz tried to
bring about a counterrevolution in Lima. He ordered her ex-
pulsion from Lima, and the letter of expulsion is here pub-
lished.)

1830-1845 Correspondenda y documentos reladonadas con la Senora
Manuela Saenz que demuestran la estimadon que en ella hadon
varios jefes y particulares, y la parte que tomaba en los asuntos
de la politica.

(Marked as "Volume 56" in the old Library of Bogota, this
volume is irretrievably lost. It was seen as late as 1875, when
its contents were commented on by the authors Leonidas Scar-
peta and Saturnine Vergara.)

1840 Augusto Le Moyne, Viajes y estandas por la America del Sur.
Bogota, 1945. Reprint

(Lemoyne was one of the mission from the King of France
which came to offer Bolivar a crown under the protection of
His Most Christian Majesty. Le Moyne describes Manuela at
Bolivar's Quinta, or villa.)

1858 P. Prouvonena, Memorias y documentos para la historia de la
independenda del Peru y causas del mal exito que Tna tenido
esta. 2 vols, Paris, 1858.

(Prouvonena is the pseudonym of Jose de la Biva Agxiero, who
set up a rival republic while Bolivar was in Peru. He was sent
into exile by General Bolivar. This is a vitriolic attack on
Bolivar, as well as on Manuela Sdenz. )

Bibliography 307

1879-1888 Daniel Florencio O'Leaiy, Memorias. 32 vols. Caracas,
1879-1888.

(This is the famous compilation of letters, documents and
memoirs made by General O'Leary, the friend of Bolivar and
Manuela. In the appendix of Volume 3 of this collection O'Leary
wrote of Manuela. That volume was suppressed, and the copies
burned; only three survived. The volume was reprinted in
Bogota in 1914.)

1887 Venancio Ortiz, "Recuerdos de un pobre viejo." Papel Periodico
Ilustrado, April 1887, Bogota.

(Ortiz, who was more than eighty when he wrote his "Recuer-
dos" writes of Manuela Saenz in Bogota as he remembered
her.)

1887 Manuel J. Calle, Leyendas del tiempo heroico, Quito, 1887.

(Publishes for the first time the tradition of the famous episode
in Manuela's history the throwing of the wreath at Bolivar's
head at his triumphant entrance into Quito in 1822.)

1889-1903 J.-B. Boussingault, Memoirs. 5 vols. Paris, 1889-1903.

(The very rare Memoirs of Jean-Baptiste J. D. Boussingault
[1802-1887], with only one set known in the United States,
at the Harvard College Library. He was the French scientist
who was one of the mission invited by Sim6n Bolivar to come
to Gran Colombia in 1822 to aid in the reformation of the
schools of scientific instruction. He remained in America until
1832. A famous chemist, the "father of chemical agronomy/' a
professor at the Sorbonne and a member of the French Acad-
emy, he was the author of numerous books and numerous
scholarly monographs. In his old age he dictated his memoirs
to his daughter, Madame Holzer. An engaging raconteur, who
always gave a droll and ironical twist to things, Boussingault
seemed to remember everything. Almost everyone who played
a part in the drama of the wars of independence in South
America comes under his notice Bolivar, Santander, Cordoba,
General Harrison and, most of all, Manuela Saenz. Volume 4
gives a good part to her she has the most detailed feuilleton
of all who parade themselves in front of Boussingault's memory.
(Latin American historians, generally, do not much like these
memoirs since Boussingault writes of Bolivar without sen-

808 Bibliography

timentality. ) But all that he says of Manuela and he was the
only literary figure of note who knew her intimately is so
borne out by the records that I have used his account of the
amable loca fully and unreservedly, since his is the only fulsome
contemporary portrait of this delightful and dangerous Man-
uelita).

1890 Aristides Rojas, Leyendas historicas. 2 vols. Caracas, 1890.

(Precisely what the title says: they are "historical legends," espe-
cially the part entitled "El Libertador y la Libertadora del
Libertador." These legends possess no value. )

1892 Vida de Rufino Cuervo. 2 vols. Paris, 1892.

(The life of one of the great literary figures of nineteenth-
century Bogota, who remembered something of Manuela
Saenz.)

1892 Guiseppe Garibaldi, Memorie autobiografiche. 9th edition.
Rome, 1892.

(A short personal reminiscence of Manuela by the great Gari-
baldi, himself in exile from Italy, who met and was treated
kindly by Manuela Saenz in Paita in the year 1856. )

1898 Jose Maria Cordovez Moure, Reminiscencias. 6 vols. Bogota,
1946.

(Cordovez Moure [1835-1918] did not know Manuela Saenz,
but he knew almost all the performers who took part in the
drama of her life, and he remembered what those who knew her
said of her. Manuela appears in Volume 4, pages 111-118. )

1895 Ricardo Palma, "La Protectora (Rosita Campusano) y La Lib-
ertadora (Manuela Saenz)," in Tradiciones peruanas. 6 vols.
Madrid, 1935.

(The great Limean raconteur, Ricardo Palma [1833-1919], who
did not like a good story spoiled by the interposition of a sordid
fact, is in this story the font and source of some of the legends
of Manuela. Palma says that he saw Manuela Saenz in the
port of Paita in 1856, the year of her death, when he was a pay-
master on a coastal sailing vessel called the Loa. I shall not dis-
pute him. However, a good half of the "tradiciones" given in
this short piece proved untrue when the actual records were dis-
covered. )

1896 Prospero Pereira Gamba, Memories. Madrid, 1912.

Bibliography 309

(Contains a personal recollection o the appearance of Manuela
during the years 1830-1835.)

1908 Edurado Posada, "La Libertadora." Trofeos, Bogota, Diciembre,
1908.

1908 Jacinto Jijon y Caamaiio, "Dona Manuela la Libertadora/'
Boletin de Id Academia National de Historic, Quito, Julio-
Diciembre, 1908.

(An attempt by the late Jipon y Caamano, known for his work
on the prehistory of Ecuador, to give Manuela the gossamer of
national heroine. )

1911 A. Arcos, Historias, leyendas y tradiciones. 4 vols. Cartagena,
1911-1914.

(Of the "Tradition 9 school of Eicardo Palma. There are, how-
ever, some personal recollections of Manuela Saenz while she
was on her way to exile. )

1925 Luis Augusto Cuervo, Apuntes historiales. Bogota, 1925.

(The gently erudite Dr. Cuervo, member of the Academy of
History of Bogota, gives in the chapter entitled "Amores de
Bolivar" [pp. 174-222] many of the legends about Manuela
Saenz.)

1927 Jorge Bailey Lembcke, "La verdadera Manuelita Saenz." EZ
Universal, September 9, 1927, Caracas.

(A literal translation of J.-B. Boussingault's feuilleton on
Manuela with an emphasis on her waywardness, which is an
attempt on the part of the Caracas school to discredit Manuela
so as to keep intact the demigod aspect of Simon Bolivar. )

1934 Hugo Moncayo, "Evocacion de San Francisco de Quito y elogio
a Dona Manuela Saenz." Boletin del Institute National Merjia,
Quito, 1934, Nov./Dec, 1934.

(The Quito school, in direct opposition to the Caracas school
which would paint Manuela as a Messalina; here an attempt to
make her stainless and play down her peccadilloes.)

1936 Camilio Destrugge, "Dona Manuela Saenz." El Ejercito Na-
tional, pp. 337-386, Quito, 1936.
(More of the Quito school on Manuela.)

1936 Cornelio Hispano, Historia secreta de Bolivar. Ediciones Litera-
rias, Paris-Madrid, 1936.
("Manuelita La Bella" occupies a whole chapter in this "secret

310 Bibliography

life*' of Bolivar by Hispano [Ismael Lopez]; as lie Is a literary
man lie treats the subject well, presenting all the facts as they
were known when he wrote, in 1936. )

1938 Augusto Arias, Manuela Saenz en Paita. Caracas, 1938.

(A glimpse of Manuela as she was in Paita during her years of
exile.)

1939 Alberto Miramon, Los septembrinos. Bogota, 1939.

(The night of the 25th of September and the attempt on Bo-
livar's life, and Manuela's part in the drama, by one of Colom-
bia's well-known historians. )

1940 Ramon Nunez del Arco, "Los hombres de Agosto." Boletin de la
Academia National de Historia, Quito, Vol. 20, July-Decem-
ber, 1940.

(In which the Aispurus, Manuela's maternal parents, are men-
tioned as patriots and there is described the part they played in
the uprising against royalist rule. )

1941 Joaquin Tamayo, Nuestro Siglo XIX: La Gran Colombia. Bogota,
1941.

(One of the finest and most judicious of histories of the South
American revolution and in particular Colombia's part. Manuela
appears in true historical perspective in the chapter "Cesar o
nada," pp. 241-301.)

1942 Fernando Bolivar, "Recuerdos de Fernando Bolivar," an essay
written only for the edification of his sons by Fernando Bolivar.
Boletin de la Academia National de la Historia, Caracas, Vol-
ume 25, October-December 1942.

(The favorite nephew of Simon Bolivar, whom the general sent
to the Germantown Academy in Philadelphia, and later to the
University of Virginia. He arrived in Bogota just before the at-
tempt on Bolivar's life. Fernando Bolivar's observations on Man-
uela, short as they are, are invaluable as a contemporary ac-
count. )

1942 General A. I.. Chiriboga, "Los Saenz en el Ecuador." Boletin
de la Academia "National de Historia de Quito, Vol. 22, July-
December 1942.

(In which General Chiriboga, whose ancestor was a correspond-
ent of Manuela S4enz, gives the ancestral background of the
Sienz family of Quito. )

Bibliography 811

1944 Jorge Perez Concha, "Manuela Saenz, Libertadora del Liber-

tador," America, Quito, January-March 1944.

( More of the Quito school. )
1944 Alfonso Ruinazo Gonzales, Manuela Saenz: La Libertadora del

Libertador. Buenos Aires, 1944.

(This is the first full-length book attempted on Manuela Saenz.)
1944 Concha Pena, La Libertadora: El ultimo amor de Simon Bolivar.

Panama, 1944.

1944 E. Naranjo Martinez, "Bolivar y la Belle norteamericana Jean-
ette Hart." Eoletin de Historia y Antiguedades, Vol. 31, Novem-
ber-December 1944, Bogota.

(An account from original source material of the affair of
Bolivar and Jeanette Hart and Manuela's part in its break-
up.)

1945 Vicente Lecuna, "Papeles de Manuela Saenz." Eoletin de la
Academia National de la Historia, Caracas, Vol. 28 ? October-
December 1945.

(The first publication of some of the missing papers of Manuela
Saenz important for the beginning of the breakdown of the
legends. )

1946 Luis F. Borja, TEpistolario de Manuela Saenz/* Eoletin de la
Academia National de Hfetoria, Vol. 26, July-December 1946,
Quito.

(More original source material: Manuela's letters to her old
friends in Quito while she was in exile in Paita. )

1946 Alberto Miramon, La vida ardiente de Manuelita Saenz. Bogotd,
1946.

1948 Gerhard Masur, Sim6n Bolivar, University of New Mexico,
Albuquerque, 1948.

(This is the finest and most judicious book yet to be published on
the life of Sim6n Bolivar. Written by a German historian long
resident in Colombia, the material that bears on the Republic
of Colombia and of Venezuela is most complete. Manuela Senz
is fully treated in Chapter 26, "Interlude," and although Dr.
Masur has relied on Rumazo Gonzales, he has carefully avoided
giving Manuela either the "discrediting" of the Caracas school
or the "saintly nimbus of the Quito school." This is a brilliant
work.

312 Bibliography

1949 Dimitri Aguilera-Malta, "La Caballeresa del Sol" El Norte,

June 1949.

(Purported to be an extract of a book on Manuela Saenz, based

on original material. )
1951 Waldo Frank, Birth of a New World. Boston, 1951.

The original material on which this biography is based was found in
the following places:

LIMA (Peru)

Archives of the Archbishop

Archives of the Church of San Sebastian

National Archives of Peru

Archives of the Ministry of Finance and Commerce

The private library of Francisco Moreira y Paz Soldan, San Isidro,

Lima

The private library of Luis Ortiz de Cevallos, Miraflores, Lima

The collections of Senor Don Aurelio Miro Quesada
PIURA (Peru)

The Notarial Archives of Senor Sanchez Condemarin
PANAMA

The National Archives of Panama
QUITO (Ecuador)

The Archives of the Municipality of Quito

National Archives of Quito

Archives of the Archbishop of Quito

Private library of Jacinto Jijon y Caamano
BOGOTA (Colombia)

National Archives of Bogota

Private library of Senor Don Luis Augusto Cuervo

Unpublished manuscripts:

Diario en la Jornada de Ayacucho (1884}, by "F. C."
(300 manuscript pages by an eyewitness and participant in the
Battle of Ayacucho.)

The Battle of Ayacucho, by Dr. Justo Sahuaranra Inca.
(Fragment of a larger heretofore unknown and unused manuscript
on the events leading up to the last battle for independence. )

Index

INDEX

ACEVAL, TOBIBIO DE, 127

Acosta, Colonel Joaquin, 280

Acushnet (whaler), 286

Adams, John Quincy, 80, 95

Aispuru family, 44, 46, 63, 64

Aispuru, Joaquina (mother of Manuela
Saenz), 10, 11, 12, 40-41

Aispuru, Mateo Jose de (Manuela's ma-
ternal grandfather), 11

Albion Battalion, 249

Altoaguirre, Leon de, 127

Alvarez, Jose Maria, 186-187

Amazon (valley), 45, 110, 294

Amotaje, Peru (village), 294

Amuero, Cristobal, 162-164, 165, 166

Anaquito. See Quito

Arganil, Dr., 211, 212

Argentina, 7, 54, 66, 105

Ayacucho, 114, 119, 120, 239

Ayacucho, battle of, 119-123, 134, 287

Aylesbury (town), 127

Azuero, Vicente, 196, 258-259, 260,
261-262

BALTIMORE, 141

Bello, Andres, 26

Bogota, 20, 39, 69, 70, 106, 142, 155,
168, 172, 174, 177, 178, 181, 187,
194, 198, 206, 207, 209, 210, 214,
216, 224, 226, 229, 230, 232, 233,
244, 246, 254, 263, 267, 268, 272,
280, 281, 284, 288, 292, 293

Bolivia, 143, 145, 146, 152, 155-156,
211, 239

Bolivar, Fernando (Bolivar's nephew),
209, 210, 218, 220, 269

Bolivar, Sim6n (1783-1830), 7, 16, 18,
19; at battle of Boyaca, 20; descrip-
tion of (in 1822), 25; birth, educa-
tion, 26; marriage, 27; settles in Paris,

27; moved by Humboldt, 27; fights in
Venezuela, 28; sees Manuela for first
time, 28-29; his foreign legionnaires,
33-34; his love of dancing, 38; atti-
tudes toward "women, 3839; seduces
Manuela, 39; work in Quito, 42; noc-
turnal love of Manuela, 41-44, 46;
political ideas, 4754; takes Guaya-
quil, 56-57; meets San Martin, 58-
59; quoted, 60; diplomatic triumph
over San Martin, 60-62; returns to
Quito ( 1822), 63; meets Monteagudo,
66-68; prepares army for Peru, 68-
69; quoted, 70; escapes Manuela,
sails tor Peru, 72-73; idol of Lima,
77-80; politics in Peru, 80-81; lives
at La Magdalena, 81; quoted, 87;
departs for Trujillo, 88-89; ill at Patf-
vilca, 92; writes Torre Tagle, 92-93;
quoted, 99; has affair with Manuelita
Madrono, 101; trains army in Trujillo,
105107; reviews army in Junin, 110;
ihis victory at Junin, 112-113; En-
abling Act revoked, 117; returns to
Lima ( 1824), 118; hears of Ayacucho
victory, 123; orders siege of CaHao,
130; acts in Monteagudo murder,
131133; gives an account to Con-
gress, quoted, 134; dictator of Peru,
135; visits frigate United States, 135;
affair with Jeanette Hart, 136-137;
writes Manuela, quoted, 140-141; in
Bolivia, corresponds with Manuela,
145-148; overwhelmed with honors,
15O-152; rumor of kingship, 152-154;
revolt in republics, 154-158; leaves
Peru, 159; writes Manuela (1827) to
come to Bogota, 173; calumniation
of, 168-176; open break with Santan-
der, 176-177; unhealthy appearance

316

Index

Bolivar, Simon (continued)

(1828), 184; politics, 189-193; at-
tempted assassination, 195-196; dic-
tator, 197; angered at Manuela, 199-
200; assassination rumors, 206-207;
escapes at masked ball, 208; conspir-
acy against, 210-214; attempted
murder of, 215-218; hides in sewer,
218-219; death trials, 222-224; dis-
illusioned, ill, 225-227; at ball
(Bogota), 229; war with Peru
(1829), 232; rides off, 232; ill after
Tarqui victory, 240-244; center of
monarchical rumors, 244-247; obser-
vations on Cordoba, 247; grief over
Cordoba's death, quoted, 250; rides
into Bogota in hollow triumph, 250-
251; demands war against Venezuela,
253; exiled (1830), 254-257; writes
Manuela from Guaduas, 258, 262,
263, 264; comments on death of
Sucre, 268; fatally ill of tuberculosis,
269-271; mentions Manuela for last
time, 272; death, 272, 280; finds his
glory, 291-292; letters, correspond-
ence published, 296, 298

Bonaparte, Joseph, 48

Bonaparte, Napoleon, 7, 27, 38, 48, 104,
113, 120, 152, 154, 157, 192

Boston, 152

Bourdon, Jacques, 236

Boussingault, Jean Baptiste (1802
1887), 142-143, 188, 194-195, 202-
203, 204, 205, 211, 217, 218, 219,
235, 236-238, 240, 241-244, 250,
254, 257, 280

Boyaca, battle of, 20, 28, 241

Brazil, 51

Bresson, Charles de, 244, 246-247

Bruiz, Captain A., 104

Bucaramanga (Colombia), 191-196

Bustamente, Colonel Jose, 160, 161-
164

Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 151

CALI (COLOMBIA), 39

Callao (Peru), 77, 78, 79, 80, 90, 93,

94, 95, 97, 118, 129, 139, 144
Campbell, Colonel Patrick, 256
Campo, Juana Maria del ( wife of Sim6n

Saenz), 12

Campusano, Rosita, 53, 55, 62
Canterac, General, 80, 95
Carlos III (1716-1788), 31

Carlos IV (1748-1819), 79, 105
Cartagena, 39, 190, 192, 228, 273, 284
Carujo, Major Pedro, 211, 213-220, 224
Casa Boza, Counts of, 126
Casas Matas (women's prison, Lima),

164, 165

Castillo y Rada, 195, 252
Castillo y Rada, Teresa del, 195
Charles X (King of France, 1824-

1830), 244
Cheyne, Dr. Richard, 226, 231, 234,

242, 243

Chile, 7, 22, 50, 54, 97, 111
Clay, Henry, 144, 151, 153-154, 192
Cochrane, Thomas, Lord, 54
Colombia, 51, 64, 68, 137, 155, 168,

172, 176, 192, 194, 254, 263
Coloseo Theatre (Bogota), 206-208
Concha, Ventura, 289
Congress of Ocana, 180, 181, 188, 190,

197

Congress of Panama, 90
Congreve Rockets, 97
Conquest of Peru, The (Prescott), 97
Corday, Charlotte, 211
Cordoba, General Jos Maria (d. 1829),

34-35, 82, 120, 121, 161, 166, 181,

196, 199-200, 208, 229, 238, 241,

247-249
Crofston, Colonel Richard, 199, 221

D'ELHUYAR, FAXJSTO, 8-9, 237
Demarquet, Colonel Charles, 157, 174,

177, 178, 179, 234

Diary of Bucaramanga (Lacroix), 272
Don Quixote, 51, 143, 215
Duckbury, Captain T., 33
Duran, Domingo, 264-266

ECUADOR, 7, 50, 51, 232, 233, 278, 279

Enabling Act, 70, 72, 117

England, 48

Escobar, CapMn Manuel, 289

Espinosa, Bruno, 260, 264

FALLS OF TEQXJENDAMA (COLOMBIA),

242, 243
Fergusson, Colonel William (d. 1828),

33, 36, 65, 83, 103, 104, 180, 195-

196, 197, 205, 208, 210, 217, 218,

224

Fernando VII (of Spain), 180
Flores, General Juan Jos<, 282, 283, 284
Foreign legions, 32-34, 68, 205

Index

317

France, 48, 271

French Revolution, 48, 67, 212

Freyre, Cayetano, 146, 147, 158, 161,

285, 289-290
Fuerte Gonzalez, Count of, 126

GARIBALBI, GIUSEPPE ( 1807-1882 ) ,

295-296
Gauchos, 111

Germantown Academy, 209
Godos, 2, 4, 7, 20, 38, 47, 54, 55, 62,

68, 70, 80, 82, 94, 99, 107, 111, 112,

114

Godoy, Manuel de (1767-1851), 27
Gomez, Manuela, 156
Gonzalez, Florentine, 197, 213-222, 224
Gran Colombia, 2, 6, 7, 16, 31, 48, 51,

52, 58, 59, 61, 68, 71, 116, 155, 156,

161, 177, 181, 184, 189, 190, 209,

222, 232, 236, 237, 239-240, 245,

248, 251, 252, 267, 281
Guaduas (Colombia), 258, 280
Guaranda (Ecuador), 283
Guasos, 111
Guayaquil (Ecuador), 7, 45, 52, 55, 56,

57, 58-61, 62, 68, 72, 166-167, 203
Guerrera, General Antonio de la, 297-

298
Guerrera, Colonel Ram6n, 212, 213-

220, 223-225

HALLOWES, CAPTAIN E., 33

Hand, Rupert, 35, 249

Harrison, General William Henry

(1773-1841), 228, 240, 241-242,

244, 246, 248, 251
Hart, Captain Elisha, 136
Hart, Jeanette, 136-137
Henderson, Consul General (Great

Britain), 229
Henderson, Fanny, 196, 229, 238, 239,

248, 249, 251
Heres, Tomds de, 82, 87, 95, 130, 146,

158, 161

Holbach, Paul von, 142
Honda (Colombia), 273
Hondu (dance), 104
Hormet, Auguste, 211, 212, 221, 222
Huamacliuco (Peru), 100, 101, 102
Huancayo (Peru), 116
Huanuco (Peru), 109
Huaras (Peru), 99, 101, 102, 103, 107
Hull, Commodore Isaac (1773-1843),

135

Humboldt, Alexander von (1769-

1859), 14, 26, 48
Huriaca (Peru), 109
Hyslop, Maxwell, 269, 282

IBANEZ, BERNAKDINA, 39

Ibarra (Ecuador), 158, 294

Ibarra, Lieutenant Andres, 210, 215,

216, 218

Ibarra, Colonel Diego, 86, 180
lea (town), 140
Iliingsworth, John, 69, 233, 241
Indians (Quito), 14-15
Irish legionnaires, 33-34, 68
Italy, 27, 295

JAMATCA, 14, 254, 269, 271, 282, 283

Jauja (Peru), 115

Jefferson, Thomas, 209

Jonotas (Manuela's slave), 4-5, 45, 46,
94, 95, 140, 164, 167, 194^195, 198,
199, 204, 208, 214, 218, 233, 236-
237, 259, 260, 261, 273, 274, 284

Junin, 111, 112, 113

Jirnm, battle of, 111-112, 115-116

LACROIX, COLONEL Louis PEROUX BE,
191-192, 272, 273-274, 285

LaFayette, Marquess Maria-Joseph de
(1757-1834), 135, 151, 209

La Magdalena (Lima), 81, 89, 95, 133,
148, 164

La Mar, Mariscal Jose de la (1777-
1846), 119-120, 239, 287-288

La Perricholi. See Micaela Villegas

Lara, General Jacinto, 82, 83, 85, 95,
99, 108, 120, 137, 161, 164-165

Larrea, Juan de, 8, 20, 23, 24, 28, 30,
31, 33, 36

La Saenz. See Manuela Sienz

La Serna, Viceroy, 122

Lasso de la Vega, Pedro, 202

Latacunga (Ecuador), 294

Le Moyne, Auguste, 227

Lima (Peru), 7, 21, 22, 23, 50, 53, 54,
62, 64, 66, 67, 72, 77, 78, 79-81, 82,
83, 87, 89, 92-93, 94, 95, 111, 118,
128, 129, 133, 134, 140, 144, 146,
147, 148, 150-166, 278, 288, 289

Llaneros, 35, 68, 111

London, 141, 144, 151

Loos, Carolina de, 90

Louis XVIII (1755-1824), 152, 190,
192

318

Index

Louis Philippe, Due d'Orleans (1773-

1850), 245
Luisa, Queen of Spain, 27

MADRID (SPAIN), 27

Madrono, Manuelita, 101

Magdalena River (Colombia), 272

Marat, Jean Paul, 210

Maria Antonia (Bolivar's sister), 152,

209, 244

Mariana, Marquesa de Solanda (An-
tonio de Sucre's wife), 34, 104, 239,

252

Melville, Herman (1819-1891), 207
Menby, Captain Thomas, 180
Mier, Joaquin de, 270
Mffler, General William (1795-1861),

94, 95, 97, 105, 111, 112, 113
Miranda, Colonel, 230-231
Monet, General, 121
Monte Alegre, Marquis de, 88
Monteagudo, Bernardo (1786-1825),

53, 55, 60, 66-68, 89-90, 93, 94, 99,

110, 131-133
Montebello, Due de, 244
Montoneras, 96, 97, 98, 111
Montufar, Carlos, 8, 16
Moore, Dr. Charles, 65, 91, 110, 180,

205, 218, 226
Moscow (Russia), 104, 105, 111, 113

Napanga (DANCE), 36, 104, 237
Narino, Antonio (1760-1823), 201
Natan (Manuela's slave), 44, 164, 284
Nazarenas, Convent of the (Lima),

162

Night, Dr., 269
Numancia Regiment, 23
Nunez, Josefina ("Pepita"), 39

OBANDO, COLONEL, 267

O'Connor, General Francis Burdett

(1791-1871), 33, 83, 103, 104, 116
Olieary, General Daniel F. (1800-

1854), 33, 83, 85, 88, 116, 140, 157,

190, 191, 249, 293, 296
Order of the Sun, 13, 24, 36, 55, 84, 288
Orue", General Domingo, 127, 285, 289

PADILLA, ADMIRAL, 192-193, 223-224,

225
Paez, General Jose* Antonio (1790-

1873), 193, 229, 253
Paine, Tom, 66

Paita (Peru), 277-279, 284, 286, 288,
290, 292, 293, 294, 295, 297, 298

Palacio de San Carlos, 197, 206, 210

Palacios, Jose, 42, 43, 84-85, 118, 137,
182, 185, 206, 211, 213, 216, 254,
256 271

Panama, 7, 37, 51, 60, 125, 155

Paris, Jose (Pepe), 181, 203, 206, 215,
221, 232, 234, 247, 254, 266, 285

Paris, Juana Maria, 235

Paris, Manuelita, 235-236

Payta-town. See Paita

Perez, General Jose, 86, 161

Peru, 7, 22, 44, 45, 50, 52, 54, 56, 58,
59, 60, 61, 62, 66, 67, 68, 69, 73, 77,
80, 81, 83, 88, 97, 99, 106, 107, 117,
118, 136, 152, 153, 154-167, 232,
233, 294

Philadelphia, 209

Piura (Ecuador), 288

Pizarro, Francisco, 278

Plazuela de San Carlos (Bogotd), 201,
214, 266

Pombo, Ana, 195

Popayan, 39, 174

Portocarrero, Jose Antonio, 183

Posada Gutierrez, Colonel, 254

Prescott, William H., 97

Prevost, Judge J., 80, 94

Puna, 96, 97, 98, 129

QUTNTA DE BoLfvAR, 178, 183-187, 189,
194, 198, 255-256

Quito (Ecuador), 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13,
14, 17, 18, 19, 21, 24-28, 30, 31, 32,
39, 40, 44, 45, 56, 58, 62, 63, 65, 67,
71, 83, 157, 166-167, 172, 211, 232,
237, 238, 288, 294

Quito, battle of, 1, 7, 34, 111

RAVENGA, JOSE, 209

Restrepo, Jose Maria, 195, 246

Reverend, Dr. Alexander, 270-282

Ribera, Mariano, 236

Rights of Man, The, 201

Riva Agiiero, Jos< de la, 53, 81, 86-87,

90, 91

Robelli, Antonio, 283
Robinson, Samuel. See Sim6n Rodriguez
Rodil, General Jose* Ram6n, 129-130,

133, 144-150
Rodriguez, Sim6n (d. 1854), 155-156,

294, 295-296
Rosamel, Admiral, 153

Index

819

Roulin, Desire, 236

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 26, 142, 143

Ruden, Alexander, 286

Russia, 104

SAENZ, GENERAL JOSE MARIA (1797-
1834), 23, 36, 58, 172, 238, 282

Saenz, Manuela (1797-1856), descrip-
tion of (1822), 5-6; her remem-
brance of the early days of revolution,
7-8; at Santa Catalina convent, 8-9;
her bastardy, 10; born in Quito
(1797), 12; arrival in Lima (1817),
21; revolutionary activities in Lima,
2223; analysis of character, deco-
rated with the Order of the Sun
(1821), 24; throws wreath at Bolivar,
28-29; at Victory Ball, 35; dances
notorious napanga, 36; becomes Boli-
var's mistress, 40; her slave Jonatas,
41; visits Bolivar at night, their
passion, 42-44; as patriot, 45-46;
attitude toward love and marriage,
46-47; imbibes Bolivar's ideals, 47-
53; knowledge of Lima, 53; husband
learns of affair, 62-63; fights with
family, 63-64; first letter to Bolivar,
64-65; cares for ailing Bolivar, 65;
introduces Monteagudo, 66-68; vents
her hatred on Santander, 70-72;
arrives in Lima (1823), 83-84; is
attached to Bolivar's staff, 86-87; is
maitresse-en-titre at La Magdalena,
89-90; corresponds with Santana, 90-
93; escapes from godos, 94-96;
crosses Andes, 9799; angered at
Bolivar (letter quoted), 101-102;
attends party, 103-104; at Trujillo,
105; in Andes with army, 108-111;
follows army, 113-114; at Jauja, 115-
116; with Bolivar in Lima, 118; her
marital problems, 124-125, 145-147;
married to James Thorne (1817),
128; "Mrs. Thorne," 128-129; in rev-
olutionary movement, 128; problems
of an affair, 129; her jealousy, 133-
134; ends Jeanette Hart affair, 137;
separates from Bolivar, 138; returns
to James Thorne, 138-140; meets
Sim6n Rodriguez, 141-144; leaves
James Thorne, 148; Queen Manuela?
153, 246; is left alone in Lima, 156-
159; arrested in revolt, 162; threat-
ened with imprisonment, 165; exiled,

166-167; rides to Bogota (1827),
168-177; arrives at Bolivar's Quinta,
179-182; description of, 185; her acts
of folly, 188; writes Bolivar, 193; her
dress in Bogota, 194; entertainment
at Quinta, 194-195; shoots Santander
in effigy, 198-199; lives at San Carlos
(Bogota), 203; fondness for animals,
203-204; intelligence center, 204-
206; saves Bolivar at masked ball,
207-208; estrangement from Bolivar,
208-209; goes to palace (1828), 212-
213; saves Bolivar from death, 215-
216; wounded, 217; objects to
clemency, 222; cares for Bolivar at
Quinta, 226; appearance ( 1828), 227;
attends ball with Bolivar, 229-230;
her intimate life, 232-237; Manuela
nurses Bolivar, 248-254; remains in
Bogota, 254-257; fights with govern-
ment, 258; destroys her effigy, 261;
defends herself, 262-263; aided by
women of Bogota, 263-264; writes
Tower of Babel, 264; arrested, 265-
266; extols Bolivar, 268; sends La-
croix to Bolivar, 272; receives letter
about Bolivar's death, 273-274; ex-
iled in Paita, 278-280; exiled in 1834
from Colombia, 281; in Jamaica, 282;
writes General Flores, 282, 284; re-
turns to Ecuador (October, 1835),
283; reconciled to Paita exile, 286;
meets Herman Melville, 287; breaks
hip, 289; hears of Thome's death;
attempts to get share of estate; ma-
ligned, 289-290; sees glorification of
Bolivar, 291-293; welcomes Rodri-
guez, 294-295; meets Garibaldi, 295-
296; caught in epidemic, 297; dies
(November 23, 1856), 298-300

Saenz y Tejadas, family of, 127

Saenz y Vergara, Sim6n (Manuela's
natural father), (d. 1827), 10, 12,
15, 41, 125

Samano, Juan (Viceroy of New Gra-
nada), 20

San Ignacio Church (Bogotd), 202, 233

San Udefonso de Caras (Peru), 100

San Isidro, Countess of, 24

San Martin, General Jos& de (1778-
1850), 7, 22, 23, 42, 45, 52, 53, 54,
55, 57, 59-62, 66, 67, 80, 88, 111

San Pedro, Alejandrino (Colombia),
270

320

Index

San Sebastian (Lima), 126-127, 140

Sandes, General Arthur, 83, 103, 104,
160, 166, 173, 205

Santa Catalina, Convent of, 6, 8, 283

Santa Cruz, General Andres (1794-
1865), 37

Santa Marta (Colombia), 269, 272

Santana, Colonel Juan, 86, 91, 92, 100-
101, 109-110, 114, 116, 118, 123,
133, 138, 146, 181, 210

Santander, Francisco de Paula (1792-
1840), 69, 70-72, 73, 106-107, 116,
117, 151, 155, 161, 175, 176, 188,
193, 198-199, 206, 211, 212, 213-
219, 222, 224-225, 228, 281, 287

Sarda, General, 272

Sat/a and manto, 22, 139

Secret Notices of America (Juan y Ul-
loa), 11

Selva Alegre, Marquis de, 16, 20

Siege of Callao, 128-150

Sierra, Gregoria (Manuela's grand-
mother), 11

Simpson, Captain, 83, 103

Soroche (mountain sickness), 98

Soublette, Isabel, 39

Sowerby, Colonel Charles (d. 1824), 32,
10S-104, 113

Spain, 7, 20, 26, 27, 48, 49, 54

Spinoza, Baruch, 142

Stewart, Consul, 230-231

Stuart, Gilbert, 135, 151

Sucre, General Jose de (1795-1830),
7, 34, 42, 45, 46, 64, 69, 72, 82, 102,
104, 116, 117, 120, 121, 122, 155-
156, 211, 239, 241, 251-252, 256-
257, 267

Surumpi (snow blindness), 114-115

Swiss Family Robinson, The, 141

TABQUI, BATTLE OF (1829), 239
Thome, James (1770P-1847), myste-
rious life, 17, 21, 22; marries Man-
uela (1817), 37-38; his jealousy, 46;
reaction to Manuela's affair, 62-63,
83; returns to Lima (1824), 124;
wooing of Manuela, 125; mystery of,
125-126; birthplace of, 127; pris-
oner in Cadiz, 127-128; married to
Manuela (1817), 128, 138; his jeal-

ousy, 139; appearance, 139; loses pa-
tience with Manuela, 144-145, 146;
eclipsed, 148-149, 237; growing rich,
285; killed with mistress ( 1847), 289-
290

Thome, Manuela Saenz de. See Man-
uela Saenz

Toro, Maria Teresa (wife of Simon
Bolivar), 27

Toro, Marquis de, 27

Torre Tagle, Jose de (d. 1825), 53, 80,
90, 92-93, 94, 95, 133

Torre Tagle, Marquesa Josef a (d. 1825),
24, 93

Triana, Captain, 212

Trajillo (Peru), 87, 90, 95, 105

Tudor, William (1779-1830), 115, 134,
144, 153-155, 156, 160-161, 163-
164

United States (FRIGATE), 135

United States of North America, 48, 49,

135
Urdaneta, General Rafael, 180, 194,

212, 218, 219, 222, 223, 228, 232,

234, 245, 248, 249, 250, 260, 272,

287
Uztaris, Marquis de, 26

VALDES, GENERAL, 120

Van Buren, Martin, 240

Vargas Battalion (Colombia), 217, 223

Vargas Tejada, Luis, 212

Vega, Countess de la, 24

Venezuela, 7, 20, 28, 34, 48, 51, 68,

152, 193, 210, 253, 296
Victory Ball (Quito, 1822), 30-36, 104
Villars, Fanny du, 27, 39, 190
Villegas, Micaela (La Perricholi),

(1739-1819), 21, 131

WASHINGTON, GEORGE ( 1732-1799 ) ,

135, 151, 241

Waterloo, battle of, 33, 97, 105
Whittle, Colonel Charles, 217-218
Wills, William, 234, 238
Wilson, Captain Bedford, 180, 211
Wright, Captain John, 69

YUCANQUEB (VILLAGE), 64-65

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